School books, competitions, distance learning courses for teacher training, and new communications channels are among the items included in the range of proposals which make up the Support Program for 750 schools in rural communities all over the country.

The 750 schools benefiting from the Support Program for Rural Schools received donations of school materials, books, toys and support as well as items for healthcare, music and sports at the start of the academic year. This is a yearly donation made by the Bunge y Born Foundation in association with the Perez Companc Foundation.

This year, each pupil also received a dictionary to take home, as well as the latest issue of the educational children’s magazine InterCole. Each child was also given a book written especially for the Program called “El gran libro de InterCole” (The Great Big InterCole book) which is a compilation of up-to-date information on various different school subjects. The tome aims to provide teachers with reference material and also makes for interesting reading for the children, stimulating their natural curiosity.

As happens every year, a new competition has been launched with the idea of strengthening the relationship between all the schools taking part in the Program and offering the winners some extra help in addition to the donations already received. In this issue of the competition, the theme is a rural magazine called “Mi gente – Mi lugar” (My people, my place). The pupils, with the help of their families and teachers, are to design and produce a school magazine containing news, interviews, biographies and humor to show what life is really like in each rural community.

In order to take part, each school should send one or more editions of its magazine to the Bunge y Born Foundation headquarters before August 31, 2009. The first prize is an educational trip to Buenos Aires for a group of up to thirty students accompanied by three teachers.

A novel element introduced for the 2009 academic year is the distance learning courses for teacher training which include a one-day meeting, free of charge for all the teachers taking part in the Program. The distance learning course has a Virtual Classroom which has been specially designed to emphasize clarity and user-friendliness and can be accessed from the Bunge y Born Foundation main web page. The 8-week courses on offer this year will cover maths, nutrition, language and natural sciences. All any teacher interested in taking part has to do is sign up with a user name and password to be granted once they have been enrolled in the course they have chosen.

There is also a new toll-free helpline which the schools taking part in the Program can use to contact the Foundation, thus avoiding the need to incur extra costs. Queries about the Program can be answered from Mondays to Fridays, 9 am to 6 pm, on 0800-444-0437.