Chile: Hammer-&-Nail Corps

Chile’s imaginative new President Eduardo Frei may not be able to get a single key bill through his lame-duck Congress, but he has certainly stirred the country’s youth to unaccustomed activities. To help make good his election promise of “no child without a school,” Frei has recruited an unpaid hammer-and-nail corps of 1,500 university students to build schools in out-of-the-way places that have rarely seen a government mission of any kind. Local communities provide building materials, plus food and lodging for the student workers. The students expect to complete 100 classrooms during the present two-month vacation period and another 100 during the July break. Next year Frei hopes to recruit half of Chile’s 20,000 university students as vacation volunteers.