Collaboration with Unidad Académica Campesina-Carmen Pampa
Photo credit: Josh Meuth-Alldredge
Ten students from the UAC-CP School of Education are teaching our math camps in the North Yungas region. They travel in pairs for 1-2 hours on foot to reach the kids in 5 remote communities. UAC administration has agreed to incorporate this work in their required semester-long Research Project, for credit. Their students are required to complete a research project each semester throughout the studies, which is also excellent for the continuation of our program.
|
|
Photo credit: UAC-CP.
|
That's just for starters. The big plan is to motivate some of the UAC-CP students from other remote communities in the Andes to start this math program in their villages after they graduate from UAC-CP.
And UAC-CP enrolls a lot of women (6-8 out of our 10 student-teachers each semester), so we are able to provide a lot of role models for rural girls! |
Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America due to legacy of centuries of Spanish colonial enslavement and, more recently, foreign corporate exploitation. The mines of Oruro and Potosí in the Andes still hold reserves of natural resources much sought after by the developed nations. These riches have been the bane of Andean indigenous peoples--Quechua, Aymara and others--who were for centuries driven out of their lands and forced to work in the mines for bare sustenance.
Since 2006, the new government has made valiant efforts to improve the livelihood of the poor and introduce programs for development of indigenous communities, with education as their top priority. Several indigenous universities have been opened in the past decades and they are very successful. But elementary education is still in trouble. A lot of indigenous children are out of school due to poverty, working to contribute to family economy, and remoteness of their villages.
It is especially hard for girls. An indigenous girl living in a rural area will finish just 2 years of education, while a non-indigenous boy living in a city will on average complete 14 years of education, progressing to higher education. |
Photo credit: Eric Bauer. www.photo-andes.com
|
Photo credit: Amy Connor for World Vision
|
If there is a school in the village, it has one or two teachers who often teach all grades in one room. In this classroom (on the left) two grades are taught at the same time, but each its own curriculum. These kids in Bolivian Andes were the ones we had in mind when we founded the Last Mile Math.
The widely used one-room schools are THE setting for several grades to work together on the same exercises, so our method does not present a new concept to the local community. We are also working to implement this in remoter villages with no school. |