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Ascensión de Guarayos, Bolivia
Teaching every child, no matter the challenge
Education, love, and care for special needs children in rural Bolivia.
Even in the richest countries with the best school systems, providing a quality, care-filled education to developmentally disabled children is an enormous challenge. In poor countries like Bolivia that lack the funding, expertise, and government support, these children often fall completely through the cracks and receiving no education at all.
Centro Tau, founded and operated by the Tertiary Sisters in 2010, is one of the few accredited special needs schools in the remote region of eastern Bolivia. A true mission of love and mercy, here teachers, specialists, psychologists, and sisters work together to create a safe and nurturing environment where students ages 6-15 learn social and life skills, academics, and human and Christian values.
Centro Tau shares a campus with the Santa Clara Nutrition Centre, also operated by the Tertiary Sisters which serves the more than 40,000 indigenous people in the region affected by extreme poverty––37% of them children. Santa Clara offers nutritional and health education, medical and social services, and distributes baby and children’s food.
Santa Clara’s director, Sr. Yanira Leida Justiniano, thanks Dr. Ute Glock and the Franciscan Mission Centre for their valuable and long-standing support.
Centro Tau receives extremely limited funding from the Bolivian government. Families pay nothing for their children’s education. More than 95% of our operations are funded by donors.
If you are in a position to make a donation, we would be very grateful for your gift, and will put it to immediate good use.
- 90 students enrolled
- Serves students with autism, Down syndrome, and intellectual disabilities
- One of only a handful of special needs schools in the enormous Santa Cruz province of eastern Bolivia
- Donations fund more than 95% of operations
It starts with love
The challenges are many: poverty, few government resources, and, of course, overcoming intellectual disabilities.
But at Centro Tau, the love is greater: Love for every one of God’s children. The love we experience when we see these children grow, learn, laugh, smile, and make new friends.
It’s a difficult mission, but one that rewards us richly with love as help our students realize their God-given potential.
Friends, fun, and faith
For special needs children, making friends, feeling connected, and fitting in is especially difficult. This is all the more true for children living in poverty and with little access to specialized education and social services.
Group dynamics are at the forefront of the Centro Tau experience. For almost all of our students, their experience at Centro Tau is the first time in their lives that they’ve been able to play with kids their age and begin to forge relationships. The childhood friendships that come easily to other kids are life-changers for our students.
Life skills to last a lifetime
A typical day includes classes in reading, writing, and mathematics.
Staff psychologists lead classes to teach and reinforce social and practical life skills, Sr. Andrea Schett, Centro Tau’s, founder and coordinator leads classes on human and Christian values, and volunteers lead arts and crafts sessions and, physical education, dance, and singing classes.
We work closely with students’ families to ensure the progress continues at home, providing them with access to food, counseling, medical resources.
Fulfilling our mission
Our founder, Maria Huber, dedicated her life to serving the forgotten, ministering to the abandoned, and working to make life better for those in need. We can think of no better way to live up to Mother Beginner Hueber’s example than our work with the children of Centro Tau.
We see in this work our mission to recognise the signs of the times and to respond to them.
We watch children enter the school feeling alienated from kids their age, with underdeveloped social skills, and limited independence.
There is no greater feeling than watching these kids and their families learn, grown, and gain confidence and self-assurance through their time with us.
How you can help
More than 95 percent of Centro Tau’s budget is funded by donations.
Centro Tau serves 90 students, and employs more than a dozen staff, but the Bolivian government provides funding for one single teaching position. All other expenses are funded by donations.
If you are in a position to make a donation, we would be very grateful for your gift, and will put it to immediate good use.