The San Francisco de Asís Self-Sustainable Agricultural School, better known as the Cerrito Agricultural School, from Fundación Paraguaya, celebrated the graduation of 41 young people from rural areas, the only ones in the country to receive a double degree: Technical Agricultural Baccalaureate and Hospitality & Tourism Baccalaureate.

The newly graduates come from different parts of the country, such as Mariano Roque Alonso, San Pedro, Paraguarí, Benjamín Aceval, Santaní, Itacurubí, Areguá, Itá, Encarnación, Luque, Remansito, Chaco, among others, and also from abroad, from the city of Tarija, Bolivia.

Fundación Paraguaya also granted them credit lines to finance their respective business plans that they developed and defended as part of their training. The total amount to be disbursed amounts to PYG 87 million, an average of PYG. 2,000,000 to PYG. 3,000,000 for each one.

The CEO of Fundación Paraguaya, PhD. Martín Burt, highlighted that students from the Cerrito Agricultural School complete more than 210 days of classes, and that despite the fact that both technical degrees, which are studied simultaneously, are demanding, students learn in the classroom, on the street, in the field, and the calculation of profit and loss makes these Paraguayan professionals unique and different from what most believe is possible in Paraguay.

“We are experiencing the fourth industrial revolution, of what is known as artificial intelligence, machines learn, they have intelligence of their own. These young people are going to be part of that revolution, where cattle ranches are going to be managed with drones, as is already happening in the Paraguayan countryside. To the extent that Paraguayan agriculture is modernized, they are going to be the first to benefit,” he said.

The CEO also highlighted that the school, in addition to the effort it makes with the two technical degrees, has a program to end poverty, which is not relief with assistance, it is not reduction, but elimination of poverty for the 5,000 people who live around the school.

“We have defined that the 5,000 people from the Cerrito community are actually 1,000 households, 650 of them corresponding to indigenous families, with whom we managed to make their own diagnosis, defined by each one, with their own plan to get ahead, and we have discovered that they are progressing in a different way than what is happening in the rest of the country,” he said.

To conclude, the CEO stressed that we have a bright future as a country, but we need to enhance human talents to turn natural resources into wealth. “Our desire is that the entire country, and also the government, learn from our graduates who do not wait for instructions, they act, show leadership by example, because nothing stops them,” he said.

The Cerrito Agricultural School has the didactic-productive units of Animal Production, the Plant Production Center, the Dairy Plant, Bakery and Hotel, where the following are produced: Iberian cheese, dulce de leche, orchard, farm, milk production, pigs, goats, quail eggs, broiler chickens, honey, and pacú fish.

It should be noted that, this year, the educational model of the Self-Sustainable School has been highlighted by a research carried out by the IDB, JP Morgan and the HundrED NGO as one of the 15 scalable educational initiatives with the greatest impact in Latin America and recently received the recognition for Best Educational Innovation.