Daniel Tawrycky

A role model for young leaders in Chile, Daniel Tawrycky has created a tutoring program that brings together university students and disadvantaged children in an effort to develop among the children the skills needed to overcome poverty, and to inculcate among the university students a lifelong commitment to community service.

Daniel Tawrycky believes that university students in his native Chile are an untapped resource whose engagement in the community can help prevent many of the detrimental consequences of poverty among underprivileged children. In coordination with municipal governments, elementary schools, and universities, Daniel has developed a program that matches up university students as tutors for poor youngsters during an eight-month period. In order to create a strong sense of identification between participants, Daniel aims to pair up tutors with children from the same neighborhood and socio-economic background.
Daniel focuses on prevention rather than rehabilitation, recognizing that many of the problems –such as drug addiction and sexual abuse–faced by children in the disadvantaged communities in which he works cannot be solved by university students. The university tutors meet with their assigned children for two hours, twice per week, and help them with their homework, serve as sounding boards and role models, and introduce them to educational and recreational possibilities beyond the confines of their neighborhoods. Twice a month, for example, the tutors are required to take the children to a park, museum or cultural event.
Through this initiative, Daniel is attempting to change the traditionally paternalistic bent of programs dealing with poverty and youth. On the one hand, he is providing at-risk children with mentors to help guide them through the challenges of growing up in disadvantaged communities. On the other hand, he is instilling in university students a commitment to community service and, in the cases of those students who come from underprivileged backgrounds themselves, an opportunity to remain engaged in their communities.

Since Chile's return to democracy in 1990, and despite its much-lauded economic advances, poverty remains. The Chilean government created the independent National Foundation to Overcome Poverty, whose mission is to develop programs, ranging from education to income-generation, that address the various facets of poverty. Various other governmental and non-governmental entities were set up with the shared aim of wiping out poverty in Chile.
Nonetheless, according to official government surveys, there are approximately 200,000 at-risk youth in Chile today. Children from impoverished families are more likely to drop out of school than their peers from middle and upper classes, and due to large class sizes, there is scant attention for students in the classroom. Outside the school and within many families, youth are exposed to rising levels of alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution and delinquency.
However, there are many youth from underprivileged backgrounds, in Chile and in other countries around the world, who have beaten the odds associated with poverty. With drive and commitment, they have graduated high school and enrolled in universities, in most cases securing scholarships to finance their studies. In Chile, for example, approximately 25,000 students receive university scholarships each year. The scholarships are given in recognition of the students' achievements and according to financial need, but they require nothing in return. As Daniel describes, university students become accustomed to receiving support without giving anything back. Once they begin their university studies, these youngsters often become isolated from the socio-economic realities from which they emerged, and are presented with few opportunities or incentives to remain involved in their communities.

In 1998, Daniel created the program "Adopt a Sibling" with the objective of creating one-on-one tutorials between university students and at-risk children from ages 8-12. He selected the poor municipality of Quilicura, in metropolitan Santiago, as the site of his pilot project. He secured funding from a local bank, established a partnership with a major university, and convinced a local, municipally-funded elementary school to introduce the program. In its first year, "Adopt a Sibling" matched up 24 pairs of university students and children. The success of the Quilicura project, and the positive feedback of students, teachers, families, and children, convinced Daniel that the program could and should be spread to other communities throughout Chile, and he quickly set about doing just that. In hopes of taking the program national and benefiting a greater number of children, he submitted a proposal to the National Foundation to Overcome Poverty. The Foundation liked the idea and hired Daniel in February of 1999.
With the funding and support staff provided by the Foundation, Daniel has been able to spread "Adopt a Sibling" to seven municipalities, seven municipally-funded elementary schools, and four universities. The tutors are selected through a rigorous process. Interested students must complete two written tests, a group interview, and an individual interview with one of the program's psychologists. Once selected, the tutors are assigned to a community (preferably their own) and begin working with trained student coordinators, typically university students of psychology or social work, who help manage the program. The coordinators–each responsible for one school and the fifteen tutorials within that school–work with teachers and families to identify the children who will most benefit from the program, conduct comprehensive written evaluations and interviews with the children, match up their interests and needs with the appropriate tutor, and provide follow-up support as needed. To be able to address the challenges that invariably arise in the tutorials, the coordinators participate in expert-led trainings on issues such as domestic abuse or study habits. The coordinators then share this knowledge with their team of tutors during regular individual and group meetings, and in the period leading up to the termination of the eight-month tutorials, work together to plan for the separation in order to ensure that the children do not feel abandoned. The tutors, for their part, provide coordinators with monthly written reports. Each tutor receives a $50 stipend per month, a small but symbolic amount that reinforces Daniel's mission of creating a culture of community service among university students and future leaders of Chile, and of making this commitment to service their primary motivation for participating in the program.
To ensure that the program is indeed a community effort, and to cover operating expenses, each municipality pays a flat fee and each university pays a certain amount per tutor. More recently, as the program becomes better known throughout Chile thanks to media coverage, Daniel is beginning to approach banks and other businesses that might be interested in funding the program.
In 2000, "Adopt a Sibling" supported 105 tutorials, involving 210 children and university students. Working steadily towards his dream of serving tens of thousands of Chilean youngsters nationwide, Daniel estimates that in 2001 the program will extend to 315 tutorials, involving 12 universities, 12 municipalities, and 12 schools, and including the important cities of Valparaíso and Temuco, in the V and IX Regions of Chile respectively. In addition to the alliances already formed in Santiago with the University of Chile, the University of Santiago, the Catholic University of Chile, and the Metropolitan University of the Science of Education, Daniel has partnered with two universities in Valparaíso and three in Temuco.
As the demand for his initiative grows, Daniel, who is in constant search of new ways to improve the project and to maximize its impact, has decided to open up the program to university tutors from all socio-economic backgrounds. He has recently brokered a partnership with the Chilean Ministry of Planning to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of "Adopt a Sibling," the results of which will help him make any necessary modifications to the program and more effectively replicate it in other regions of Chile. He is also in conversations with the Ministry of Education to explore the possibility of an alliance which would facilitate expanding the program.
While his primary short-term goal is to spread "Adopt a Sibling" throughout Chile, Daniel foresees expanding his one-on-one youth mentoring model to other Latin American countries, as well as to youth-related institutions other than schools, such as the Chilean National Service for Minors (SENAME), which manages orphanages, halfway houses, and detention centers for youth nationwide. He also envisions working with universities to develop mandatory community service programs.
With characteristic determination and an unwavering passion for improving the lives of underprivileged youth and building a society-wide commitment to community service, Daniel is now setting about establishing contacts in universities and institutions in neighboring countries who might help him to franchise the model or to create branches of "Adopt a Sibling." In sum, with a solid pilot project already completed and alliances formed to facilitate the spread of "Adopt a Sibling" across Chile, Daniel's model of individual tutorials is poised to reach hundreds of communities and tens of thousands of youth, both children and university students, throughout Latin America.

As an only child whose parents separated when he was sixteen, Daniel remembers that he often felt lonely and wished that he had brothers and sisters to share in the joys and the struggles of growing up. He was able to find this camaraderie at school and in extracurricular activities, where he quickly established himself as a leader among his peers. In 1992, while studying law at the Andrés Bello National University in Santiago, he and a group of friends started the Jewish Federation of Zionist University Students, and shortly thereafter organized the first national meeting of Jewish university students in Chile. During this time, Daniel began to feel that it was important to explore further his Jewish roots, and in 1993 he moved to Jerusalem.
His six years in Israel were formative ones for Daniel. Leaving behind his law studies, he obtained a dual degree in Political Science and Iberoamerican Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1998. He continued in his path as a youth leader, petitioning the World Union of Jewish Students to create a Latin American Students division, which he led during his time at the University. Moreover, as a non-Israeli Jew, Daniel was entitled to free university education in exchange for participating in selected community service projects. He first served as a tutor and babysitter in an orphanage for children between the ages of 7-12, and later as a tutor in the reputed program PERAJ, which matches up some 26,000 university students as mentors for Israeli children.
Though his identification with his Jewish roots had remained strong, Daniel came to realize that his home was in Chile, and in 1998 he returned to Santiago with the dream of transforming the social realities of his country. Upon witnessing the continued pervasion of poverty and the challenges faced by disadvantaged youth, he immediately saw the opportunity to adapt PERAJ to the Chilean setting. The experience of creating and spreading the "Adopt a Sibling" program has strengthened Daniel's conviction that the future of Chile lies in its youth, and that it is his responsibility to help ensure that children of all backgrounds have the opportunity to exploit their full potential.
In August 2000, Chile's leading national newspaper, El Mercurio, selected Daniel as one of its 100 "Future Leaders" of the nation.