(Teachers from the Peru Río Apere community – Mass Training Workshop – Sana Ana 2023)
Since the 2022 administration, our training workshops have been face-to-face at the request of the Beni teachers and this year, although we are only working in two educational districts: Guayaramerín and Santa Ana-Exaltación, it was no exception. In June, we developed the mass training workshop in Santa Ana and all the teachers from the urban and rural areas of this district were summoned; we were surprised to have more than 220 teachers who were present to participate in workshops on emotional education, pedagogical strategies for critical thinking, and curricular planning.
During the course of the training week I was able to meet a group of teachers who were the ones who arrived at the place more than half an hour before the start of the workshop, an unusual punctuality. When talking with them I learned that they all worked in a mobile community called Perú Río Apere, it is a community that is more than one hundred kilometers away from Santa Ana and whose access at this time is only possible by river and passing through other municipalities; in fact, they told me about the journey they had to go through to get to the training event.
They left the community of Perú Río Apere and due to their proximity they had to arrive by river to the municipality of San Ignacio, from there by land to reach Trinidad and from Trinidad to undertake the journey also by land to Santa Ana. Upon arriving at the place of the event, the The journey continued with their own means and they had to find lodging and food for the days they spent in the workshop. All of this made me think about how important it is for Alma to continue reaching these places with training, because every day the teachers from Peru Río Apere actively participated in each day, standing out from the rest.
This is how a week of training in Santa Ana passed, with beautiful moments, stories and shared life experiences that show us the interest and motivation that some teachers have in training themselves to provide a better education to their students.
Leonel Saavedra Caceres
Beni – Bolivia Coordinator