Jorge Acaiturri, manager of DASE: We as a society cannot be tolerant in the face of so much need. We must rise up and act

The figures are significant: 122,000 tablets delivered the previous year to students of educational units, 7,800 scholarships for children and young people, 400 digital classrooms with 65-inch technological blackboards and 3,000 wheelchairs donated to people with special abilities. This is part of the work carried out in the last two years by the Public Company Development Social Action and Education (DASE), responsible for providing humanitarian assistance to people with limited resources.

The management of this entity is under the management of Jorge Acaiturri, A 39-year-old man from Guayaquil who feels that he has been inclined towards solidarity actions from a very young age, for example, when at the age of 19 he traveled to England to study English and, at the same time, got his first paid job as a cleaning assistant in a hospice for the elderly.

An anecdote occurred to him shortly after, already in Guayaquil. “I was a close friend of César Naveda, son of Cruz María Massuh, wife of Leon Febres-Lamb… Fidel Castro He came to Ecuador in 2002 for the inauguration of the Capilla del Hombre (Quito), in Guayasamín, and there was a reception at his house, to which he invited me. I was only 20 years old, but I already liked talking about politics. I had brought a book for him to sign (entitled Fidel Castro and religion), which was an interview conducted by the Brazilian father Frei Betto. It was the first interview between the Catholic Church and a socialist… So I had the biggest sideburns and when he saw me he said: This boy has sideburns like Bolívar, and he pulled them on me”. And they kept talking about Frei Betto, who became a good friend of Fidel.

It was a meeting with interesting ingredients: Fidel’s socialism, Frei Betto’s religiosity and the right wing represented by the host of the evening, León Febres-Cordero, which showed him that the diverse ideological positions of human beings would not have to divide them.

Equity programs

In those years, Acaiturri also began a cosmopolitan academic preparation. He studied a degree in Marketing and Business from Excelsior College in New York, a master’s degree in Business Administration with a mention in International Business from the University of Palermo (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and a diploma in Results-oriented Strategic Management from the Tecnológico de Monterrey. . She is currently studying a master’s degree in Social Intervention at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR).

He has had an important step in the private sector (he has an import company with his mother and has ventured into the agricultural area); however, his primary intentions had always rested in the public sector, where he started in the Ministry of Industry and Productivity as Undersecretary of the Special Economic Development Zones (ZEDE). Later he was appointed director of the Hospital IESS de Milagro, until being appointed, in 2019, director of Social Action and Education of the Guayaquil Mayor’s Office. Although in 2020, by municipal ordinance, the Public Company Development Social Action and Education is created, establishing himself in the position as general manager.

From that entity he has led programs such as Justices of the Peace, that promotes a citizen culture of respect, tolerance and fair resolution of conflicts between residents of popular neighborhoods. “We have more than 180 justices of the peace chosen by the neighborhoods,” says Acaiturri, married with a one-year-old daughter.

Another especially relevant area is education, in which they have sought to bring benefits to children and adolescents from fiscal and fiscomisional units, to reduce the wide gap between the quality of education received by the poor and the rich, as indicated. “We as a society cannot be tolerant in the face of so much need. We must rise up and act.”

Under this philosophy, the DASE reinforced the More Books program, which provides students with texts from various subjects, such as Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Social Studies and Language, by adding the book of comprehensive human development, “to strengthen knowledge of human values ​​and ethics, in addition to the protection of rights, the environment, civility, urban planning.” In addition, they delivered more than 180,000 “intelligent, high-quality backpacks with facilities to recharge their electronic devices.”

digital times

They decided to do so by emphasizing the need for every child and young person, regardless of their social status, to have a tablets to strengthen their education in the digital field, a need that has become more intense due to the pandemic. That plan aims to deliver, by 2023, more than 370,000 tablets for students from fifth year of basic to high school. “This will be the biggest delivery of tablets of history in a Latin American city”.

They also trained teachers and principals to better adapt to these times of virtual teaching, in addition to deepening the knowledge of more than 3,000 teachers in areas such as mathematics and language, since the PISA-D tests, which measure the level of education in developing countries, had registered weaknesses in these subjects in Ecuadorian schools.

All these activities have a high urban component, adds Acaiturri. “We can’t get away from the street.” Thus, visits to the territory become necessary to carry out responsible social work that is closer to ordinary people, and in which the experiences can be satisfactory when observing the beneficiaries of the deliveries… or very sad. “Often we are on a journey and we find out that a child or elderly person who has received, for example, a wheelchair or a tablets”. This reminds them of the fragility of human beings and the urgency with which they must work, since there are extreme needs of people who cannot wait for the help they require. This can occur, for example, between 150 cancer patients who cover their expenses annually in Solca.

The DASE is also behind social actions that are disseminated in programs such as I’m the bestsince the contestants usually ask them for help in the cases they sponsor. “Once we went to deliver a tablets a girl and we realized that she also needed physical therapy. And we were able to coordinate for her to receive it.”

Municipal shelters for homeless people and robotics laboratories in educational units are part of the DASE activities for this year in this city, which, like most in Latin America, has a large population with essential needs. And each city must show its share of rebellion to try to help them.

Requests for assistance from the DASE: Offices of the Municipality of Guayaquil, social networks @dasealcaldiagye, telephone 259-4800. The calls will be analyzed to evaluate the requirement. (I)

Clarification

In the printed version of this interview, published today Sunday in La Revista, it is wrongly indicated that Jorge Acaiturri admired Fidel Castro. That statement was a misinterpretation during the interview.