Juntas is a Peruvian social organisation focused on the prevention of gender-based violence through education and healthcare. In 2022, Mace and Juntas partnered to design a scalable intervention that would promote safer environments in the schools that form part of the Bicentennial Schools programme in Peru. We called the initiative Nurturing Talent, secured initial funding from the Mace Foundation in October 2022 and in December 2022 successfully completed the pilot implementation with 4 school communities. Nurturing Talent was designed to respond to Perus dramatic statistics of school violence. According to Perus Ministry of Education, between January and April 2022, there were over 800 reported cases of bullying in schools and over 17,000 cases of violence against children and adolescents.

The team selected a challenge to tackle: how might we reduce harassment between students in unsupervised spaces in schools? The research was backed by surveys and interviews with 213 participants, including teachers, students and administrative staff. Afterwards, Juntas co-created ideas with a cohort of Mace participants to address the challenge, turning them into practical design prototypes. The prototypes included a bathroom pass system, a self-learning box for unattended classrooms and templates for the installation of structured games on the playground to promote inclusive play, which were tested in schools and evaluated on their performance, and then grouped into the Nurturing Talent Kit.

Funding obtained will go towards scaling the project to include 75 schools, and it will allow us to kick start project planning with school communities and the Peruvian Ministry of Education. It will also allow Juntas to develop the design principles of the Nurturing Talent Kit, design the Practical guide on violence handling and prevention and produce the final version of the Nurturing Talent Kit.