It's the middle of his school day and high school senior Julio Leiva is so hard at work that beads of perspiration dot his brow and upper lip. But it's neither algebra nor physics that has him sweating. 

Leiva is out under the fierce subtropical sun, raking, weeding and watering one of the organic gardens that help feed him and his fellow students and also provide much of his school's budget.

He is one of around 150 students at Paraguay's EscuelaAgrícola de San Francisco, or the San Francisco Agricultural School, a boarding school about 45 kilometres outside Asunción where subjects such as chicken-raising, cheese-making and beekeeping are just as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. 

Founded some 12 years ago by a local non-profit aimed at assuaging poverty in this landlocked South American nation, the EscuelaAgrícola has pioneered an innovative business model: self-sufficiency, meaning the school covers the totality of its 3 billion guaraní (US$600,000) annual operating budget through the sale of meat, eggs, yogurt, cheese and produce raised by students. The students, most of them from impoverished rural regions, acquire practical skills they can use back home and, at the same time, high school diplomas that can put them on track to attend college and make the leap to better-paying professional jobs.

"Learning by doing is the traditional method of technical schools. We add extra [terms]: Learning by doing, selling and making money," said Martín Burt, director of the FundaciónParaguaya, which also operates three other schools in Paraguay and has advised similar projects in dozens of countries. "Our students aren't surprised in their first job to see the difference between what they were taught at school and real life. The Escuela is real life." 

But beyond providing students with entrepreneurial skills that allow them to turn subsistence farms into thriving businesses, the school also helps weave lost teens back into the social fabric.

"The school is a factory of miracles and dreams," said Luis Fernando Cateura, who manages the self-sustaining schools for the FundaciónParaguaya. "When they get here, the kids are really downtrodden. Like most Paraguayans from rural areas they have problems with self-esteem, they won't talk, won't look you in the eye. Here they learn to believe in themselves."

Indeed, the 15 to18-year-old students can wax poetic about everything from the surprising bug-repelling qualities of basil to the art of transplanting baby lettuce; they can compare the relative merits of drip versus spray irrigation; rattle off the fat content of goat milk or delve into step-by-step instructions on how to artificially inseminate a heifer.

Chosen through a selective exam that gives extra points to girls, indigenous kids and children from extremely poor families, the students alternate schedules, spending one week on the farm and the next in the classroom. The days are long. For those in class, the morning school bell rings at 7:30 am and the evening bell only sounds some 12 hours later. Those on the farm rise with the sun to feed the chickens or milk the cows and remain at their chores until sunset.

Students board at the school, in single-sex dorms with neat rows of bunks. For many, it's the first time they've spent a night away from home. While in theory they can spend weekends with their families, many of the students live too far away or can't afford bus fare and end up staying at the school for months at a stretch. Some of the international students—who hail from Haiti, Bolivia and Argentina—return home only once a year.

Attrition is high. Many of the students can't hack the work, the hours or the distance from their families, and the school loses about 10 percent of the student body every year. Others are expelled for running afoul of the school's strict sex, drugs and alcohol ban.

But the ones who make it through say the experience is nothing short of life-altering. Leiva, the 18-year-old senior tending the vegetable garden, said that while his first months were rocky, "I sincerely don't regret having come to school here."

"The world opened to me," he said. The fifth of seven siblings, Leiva hails from the conflict-wracked north of the country, where armed groups and drug-running gangs maraud. "I hope to go to college, but even if I don't get in, I have so many different kinds of skills to draw on to get a job. Skills and self confidence."

For more information
Website:http://www.fundacionparaguaya.org.py/?page_id=741