Colegio Leonardo Ponce Pozo
The Colegio Leonardo Ponce Pozo (CLPP), is a private school in Quito, Ecuador that helps provide an excellent education for students with physical and mental disabilities at a relatively affordable price.
Founded over forty years ago, CLPP was a school solely focused on providing an education for blind children and teens in the community. Nowadays, most of the students are neurological and physical-typical students, but they still work with seventeen disabled students. The change to allow non-disabled students to attend was to allow more students in the community to experience a better education than the public system. The change does not limit the attendance of disabled students, nor does it change the school’s heart for their students.
The current principal at the school, Juan Sebastian Castro, was drawn to the school due to the care the school provides in a low-income area. The school opens in the afternoon so that the students can work with their parents in the mornings and then receive their education afterward. This also helps cut down on the cost of operating so that the school can stay on the cheaper side to help the families afford to send their children.
For the teams that come to support this organization, like L&LI Experiential Tours Teams, here are some notes as to what you can expect. One of the main focuses of how you can serve and be served is by intentionally engaging in one-on-one conversations and relationships with the students. As of Autumn 2024, there are three disabilities that the school specializes in supporting. Those areas of specialization include supporting blindness, autism, and Asperger's Syndrome. The CLPP team encourages volunteers to explain what their life looks like and where they come from in conversations with their blind students. Explaining the buildings, nature, stores, school, work, and other aspects of your life expands their worlds, and shows them that there are many possibilities that they could experience.
The day to day work a L&LI Experiential Team will do at CLPP can vary, but typically it will follow this outline. There will be an orientation on how to support students with different types of disabilities. The schedule has classes where all the students have the same classes at the same time. There are also some class times during which differently-abled students work separately and receive specified support. Two examples of these kinds of classes are a braille class, and a computer class that teaches voice commands. Working at a school like this requires flexibility and resourcefulness. There are not as many tools that can be used, so it is taking the tools that are present and using them to their full potential. Within the flexibility, be willing to have plans change in the moment, but also have a willingness to follow the instructions of the teaching staff.
The campus has one resident dog, and the principal also brings his dog to campus, where they serve as un-official support dogs. These dogs are friendly and feel free to pet them. On campus the dress code is pretty relaxed, jeans and a t-shirt are considered standard. For the teams coming to support, it is not required, but the principal has asked for a team to get involved by creating and leading an economics and financial workshop. This will require thorough research into the economy in Quito, and Ecuador, as oftentimes financial tactics that work in the U.S. do not hold water in other countries. Another workshop that has been requested would be a hygiene workshop headed by a nursing students team.
Colegio Leonardo Ponce Pozo is excited to host Experiential Tour teams. Teams that are most likely to work alongside CLPP are education, psychology, and nursing teams.
About the Author:
Alexander Bole
My connection to L&LI:
Student with Living and Learning Int. Quito, and intern with Experiential Tours in Ecuador.
What my role is:
I go to the Location sites that are to be visited by Experiential Tours and collect information for the groups that will be working there.
Fun Fact:
I am injury prone, and visited the ER 3 different times over the 2023-24 school year for different reasons!