Since September 2020, young people from the city of Quito, Ecuador, have been attending free training courses in carpentry, pastry making, and tailoring at the Sol de Primavera Foundation. Despite the global pandemic, these girls and boys seek to complete the two years of training that will give them a professional title as artisans in their respective fields.
They are between 16 and 22 years old. They come from economically impoverished backgrounds, generally exposed to conditions of violence, substance abuse and at risk of assuming street life. Although many have not finished school, the workshops have helped to rekindle their desire to do so. These trainings involve a permanent therapeutic work where the objective is not only to get them away from the streets, but also to recognize them as social actors, owners of their lives.
Their processes involve hard work in the difficult contexts in which they live, but today their struggle has become more complex by the global pandemic. In Ecuador, this crisis has exacerbated the economic, social and educational gaps between social classes. Today, more than ever, it is necessary for these young people to build a life project even though the future looks uncertain.
This story was my final product of Level 1 of the South and Central America: Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Seminar of the VII Academy.