Vickey's blog

13 students graduated this June (mid-year: the Bolivian school year runs February - November), and 14 new students began studying with help from BQEF's donors. Below are highlights of 4 of the recent grads (more coming soon).

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Facilitators have been trained in 3 cities, and several teams have learned the skills needed to present content and run a Basic or Advanced workshop --- the mechanics and logistics of planning, organizing and setting up a gathering of 12 to 20 people for a three-day workshop.

The Bolivian facilitators and Jens Braun developed a strategy whereby local teams will organize about 10 simultaneous workshops in June in five to eight locations.  Jorge Arauz from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting will be on-hand afterwards for a gathering of all facilitators to evaluate, share, and learn from each other.  There are other requests for workshops between now and June, and Bolivan facilitators will be leading these independent of North American logistical support.

UPDATE:

Pánfilo Chura Aliaga (now preparing his thesis, with scholarship support from BQEF) and Rosemery Mamani Mamani (Education Sciences graduate and former scholarship student), co-wrote “Inter-Culturalism as a Complementary Construction”, a pamphlet they have submitted to the Bolivian National Education Department for review and use. The pamphlet topic is intended for the country’s new educational initiatives and is an academic discussion of one of the big themes in Bolivia today: how do you work together effectively in a country where there are so many cultures?

Rebeca Tintaya, Alicia, Rubén, and some of the other ex-becarios are working together to sponsor a scholarship  student. They tell us there is a real sense of the value of the becas (scholarships), and that people are very, very happy to have had that opportunity to transform lives - their own, their families, and others. 

Alicia and Rubén are also working on a virtual Aymara community, which can be found at http://www.jaqi-aru.org/.  Jaqi-aru means “voice of the people” in Aymara, and was the native language before Aymara and Quechua, similar to Latin as a predecessor to Spanish.

The goal of this project is to spread the Aymara language more widely. The project is affiliated with GlobalVoices.org.  There are over 40 articles translated into Aymara at the Global Voices website: http://aym.globalvoicesonline.org/

Two of the current scholarship students who are studying linguistics, Martin Canaviri and Mariza Quispe,  are helping with writing comments and posting photos. 

Some of those active in the project attended Evo’s inaugauration at Tiwanaku in January, and posted a write-up afterwards at the Global Voices website. They’ve also translated an article on the melting of the glaciers in Bolivia.

UPDATE: Ruben writes that they separated the seedlings out into the bags with the help of people in the village, and have given away about 2,000 seedlings. They need to see how the newly-transplanted seedlings will fare over winter. There are also some seeds left over, for additional starts next year.

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Esther Tinco Mamani, whom you may know from her video, has been visiting the Internado in Sorata, working with the students on planting vegetables and tending the expanded organic garden.

Some of the "internos" have since expressed an interest in learning about farm management.  Esther has also been talking with those who are about to graduate, encouraging them to prepare for and apply to university.

Deysi is the first female, and the first Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) facilitator, to hold such position in a Bolivian Quaker School. Some of you may recognize Deysi as a member of the BQE-Bo Scholarship Committee, as well as an AVP committee member. Deysi also serves on the BQE-Bo General Education Committee. Congratulations, Deysi, and thanks for all the good work!

View Esther's report on her work with the Internado students, planting their new, larger garden and working with them on envisioning their future.