El Niño, a phenomenon with opportunities

The project expands the reach and enhances the impact of a prize-winning, on-line, educational innovation in environmental storytelling about the El Niño Phenomenon (ENP). This initiative was piloted in June 2019 as part of participatory qualitative data collection for AHRC project “Fishing and Farming in the Desert? A Platform for Understanding el Niño Food System Opportunities in the Context of Climate Change in Sechura, Peru”, and in response to COVID-19 restrictions on face-to-face, in person teaching in Peru. On-going research is exploring how livelihoods in poor communities have historically taken advantage of ENP rains and temporary lagoons that form in the Sechura desert. “A phenomenon with opportunities” targets secondary school students in Sechura province (northern Peru), where 61.9% of the population live in poverty. Here, the state has identified low education rates as a key dimension of poor levels of social inclusion (MIDIS 2013). Working with Peruvian NGO collaborator PRISMA, the Unidad de Gestión Educativa ([UGEL]: Sechura School Board) and a desert secondary school, Instituto Educacional Daniel Alcides Carrión, storytelling training will develop on-line, digital, and research skills for more students and scale-up this experience to impact curriculum development for 154 schools and 21,059 students in the wider Sechura area. In so doing, it addresses urgent concerns about the unequal impacts of COVID-19 on learning opportunities globally.