"Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope."
Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-GeneralWhen our Project Coordinator in Beni, Kathe, told me in a foreboding at the trip would be 12 hours in a speed boat, I wasn’t worried at all. In fact, I was happy to hear it. I love being on the rivers of the Amazon basin, and had truly enjoyed 15 hour plus trips by […]
Teachers went on strike recently in Cusco. I’m not sure what this one was about as I hadn’t heard it announced on the radio as they usually are. I only found out when I pulled into Tucsa at over 4,000 meters above sea level, where we have a long running biblioteca project with the primary […]
It’s always nice to meet up with friends. On Monday I was in Huadhua to kickoff this year’s Biblioteca project there, and had the chance spend the morning with all of the parents and students. As I had not seen everyone together since our project closing in December, I was excited to catch up with […]
It is common to hear that a large obstacle to quality education in Peru is that parents care more about their crops and animals than their children’s education. My experience has revolved around this idea over the years and I’ve come to understand that is not the case. For the majority of parents, formal education […]
Our programs all have a focus on critical thinking and we often use play or project- based learning. The play or project is uniquely contextual. It is based on games, materials, toys, stories, or life experiences that are of those places, not some urban academic centre thousands of miles or continents away. Much of our […]
“A community without a school never moves forward. It’s the school that creates a true community around children and the young.” – Mother, Las Palmeras In 2016 we implemented a brand new project with the community of Las Palmeras. The goal: to create a school from scratch. Las Palmeras is a new community founded only […]
Yesterday I visited Alma’s partner project– El Manguare in the jungle region of Peru. El Manguare provides early childhood stimulation and first-grade preparation classes to children from the neighbourhood of Belen in Iquitos – one of the most economically impoverished neighbourhoods in Peru. In the visit I quickly learned that the living conditions are extremely […]
Though I tend to focus on our work and adventures in the communities high in the mountains or deep in the jungle, a core aspect of everything we do happens in the much more accessible urban centers: teacher training. In 2016, we hired and trained 30 teachers to implement innovative curriculums focused on critical and […]
One of the most common complaints I hear in schools is that the parents aren’t involved. For the most part, it’s true – the parents tend to focus more on farming and their animals more than their children’s education. That’s why in our projects we implement student portfolios. Each month our teachers compile digital portfolios […]
I was in Karhuacalla yesterday for our final dia de logro (achievement day) with the parents of Karhuacalla, where we have a primary school biblioteca project. The students had finished presenting what they had learned throughout the year, and we were reviewing the last four of the 28 digital portfolios that we create for […]
