Mr. Raul Gauto

Mr. Gauto is Paraguayan, and has worked extensively in the Latin American region in various capacities for the last 25 years. He is an Agricultural Engineer, who got his degree in 1979 from the National University of Asunción in Paraguay. Later, in 1986, he got a Master of Science degree on “Forest Economics and Resource Management” from the Virginia Polytechnic University, at Blacksburg, Virginia, in the USA.

In 2008, he co-authored the creation of a unique high school dedicated to educate the daughters of the poorest families surrounding the Reserve. The school emphasizes on entrepreneurial education, so that these girls don’t have to ask for jobs but they themselves can create and direct them. The school combines one week of classes indoors with another week outdoors, learning how to build nurseries, dairy farms, poultry, organic orchards, managing an ecotourism lodge etc. Over 300 young women have already graduated from this unique school in the middle of the forest.

In 2011 Mr. Gauto also co-authored the creation and running of the Juntos por la Educacion Foundation, an NGO that works on identifying the most important bottlenecks in the public education of Paraguay and generating public policies that will become long term road maps to education in the country. Its work on advocacy has already produced results in several laws and norms generated by the Ministry of Education in the country.