Background 2

After reading Salman Khan's book and meeting with James and Bilal at the Khan Academy headquarters, we left feeling inspired and determined.  My sons Eduardo and Elahdio returned to both of their universities close by and I returned to Bolivia.  Upon arriving in Bolivia, Jose and I met about this project.  Jose had been working his way through the Khan math curriculum and was now a master in most things Khan.  We decided that one of the first things that we needed to do was meet with our artisans and see if they were interested in the project.   

Our meeting was a resounding success.  Many of the women were very excited about the idea that we could help their children in math, a subject that tortured both children and parent's alike.  Bolivia's public school system is largely based on rote memory.  Many teachers in this system feel overwhelmed by large classes, few resources and a student population that oftentimes has no parental help at home.  The students,especially in the rural areas, often have little to no, one on one interaction with a teacher.  Math is especially difficult since success is based on the fact that each new concept is based on the mastery of the previous concepts.  Many students feel both frustrated and embarassed by their continued failure in math.  After discussing the project with the artisans, we decided that the best way to go about getting information and signing up the kids was by doing a survey.  

As we are members of the World Fair Trade Organization, we often need to find out basic information about our artisans.  AHA Bolivia works with 200-300 artisans all over the Cochabamba valley, where our offices are located.  The artisans generally work from home or in the case of crochet and handknits, they work from whereever they are.  It is not uncommon to find dried grass in some of our pieces, as a knitter herds her sheep or llamas in the mountainous countryside surrounding the Cochabamba valley.  We have done surveys with our artisans sporadically.  We usually ask demographic questions as well as questions about health and well-being.  In this new survey, we decided to add a section about all the artisans' children and their level in school.  Also we wanted to know if the students were interested in participating in a Khan Academy project during their June/July vacation (winter here in the Southern Hemisphere).  

We hired the daughter of one of our knitters Juseth, to carry out this very difficult task of trying to meet with the artisans and fill out the surveys.  Many of the artisans are semi-literate with some artisans not being able to read at all.  Juseth has a degree in Sociology and she has helped us in the past gather information about the artisans.  She also has some knowledge of Quechua, the language spoken in the countryside in this part of Bolivia.  Although some of the women can only speak Quechua, most of their children will be able to speak Spanish.  We set aside the months of March and April to carry out this task.  By the end of the allotted time, Juseth had done a fantastic job of collecting information and we found ourselves with over 100 students wishing to participate in the project.

Meanwhile, Jose and I were trying to figure out the logistics.  Where would we set up this program?  How would we get the necessary computers?   Was our internet capable of running all the computers at once?  How would the kids from the countryside get to our offices?  Who would supervise the kids?  Etc. etc.  We had a million details to figure out but we were so excited about the enthusiasm that our project had generated that we just figured that everything would work out somehow.

Anna