Foundation Ayni Bolivia - Nederland
Introduction
Evaluation report program Chaski
Renata Kolk
Juni 2016
Table of content
Presentation Chaski
Introduction
What is Ayni en what is Chaski?
What is Ayni?
Ayni Nederland and Ayni Bolivia.
What is the Chaski-program?
Preparatory courses
Computers and programs
Actors
Why an evaluation?
Context
The country Bolivia
Education in Bolivia
Methodology (1)
Methodology (2)
Presentation Chaski
Introduction
First I will tell you about the foundation Ayni and about the Chaski-program.After that I’ll explain about the reason of the evaluation and why the evaluation was done at this moment?Also I will tell you something about the context of the research area. And finally I will tell you about the evaluation methods.
What is Ayni and what is Chaski?
What is Ayni?
The foundation Ayni Bolivia Nederland was established in 1997 by Bolivians who lived and worked in the Netherlands. They founded Ayni Bolivia Nederland together with Dutch people who committed themselves to improve the living conditions of the poorest people of Bolivia. The approach to this, is characterized by using resources and knowledge of the Netherlands for the development of Bolivia, poverty reduction and reducing inequality. One of the focus points was the shortage of educated people in the middle class.
In the nineties of the last century the economic problems in South-America and Bolivia were big.Because of the weak economy many employees moved to regions with more perspective. Many Bolivians took off to Argentina to work in the agriculture, cattlebreeding, industry and construction industry. The export of these uneducated employees is since the seventies a big problem. Mostly because of the exploitation of them. By the emigration of the labor force the productive sector of Bolivia became even weaker. The foundation intended to educate people in the middleclass in order to reduce exploitation of low educated people and to increase the possibilities for a job in their own country.
However, it was impossible to train people in the middle class because the technical knowledge required for many professional training in Bolivia was not sufficiently present. The foundation then decided to go back one step and decided to focus on education in primary and secondary schools.
Ayni Nederland and Ayni Bolivia.
Ayni Nederland focuses on the development of Bolivia, poverty reduction and the promotion of equality in society. They committed to raise funds and to create support to solve the problems in Bolivia. The organization consists exclusively of volunteers. Thereby the overhead costs are minimized. Some 10 volunteers engage in fundraising, administrative tasks, communication activities, events, ICT device, etc....
Ayni Bolivia is fully independent and is a Non-Governmental Organization (ONG). It runs education programs so that young people have more opportunities for a better future because they have knowledge of ICT. In Bolivia, 4 staff members are employed by the Bolivian sister organization of Ayni Nederland, supplemented by many volunteers. Directors and teachers of participating schools contribute to the implementation of ongoing programs.
Ayni is active in six of the nine departments of Bolivia: Oruro, Tarija, Santa Cruz, La Paz, Potosi and Beni.
What is the Chaski-program?
Within the Chaski program there are various projects. These projects form together the guiding principle for schools so they can develop independently the program and so they can develop it by their own direction.
Firstly, the schools are selected on a number of hard requirements. These are based on sustainability, in other words the ability of schools to keep running the program by themselves, and are based on the capacity; there have to be at least 50 % of the teachers who are prepared to cooperate and to follow the training. Also the schools had to draw up a plan for the first year with financial elements and have to be a guide of to the activities that will be organized in the coming year by the school.
Preparatory courses
Once this plan was feasible, the next step was put: the teacher training. Prior to the introduction of ICT, teachers and directors are prepared with three courses in the field of education, finance and technology.
-At the beginning of the program not every teacher had a background in pedagogy or teaching. So they learned the basics of teaching. Ayni joined by this development with the plans of the government for the reorganization of the education system.
-The technical training has to do with the maintenance of the computers and the maintenance of the systems so that the schools can maintain the equipment.
-The financial training is actually more a preparation than a workout. In cooperation with Ayni they set up a financial plan for the first year. This transparent accounting is a hard requirement for participation in the program.
- Most plans started with a brief introduction of the situation in schools, followed by a financial statement of income.
- These revenues depend on the number of students in a school.The parents pay per pupil an amount per month or per year to keep the program running. That amount is generally somewhere around 1 euro per month, depending on the school. After all, the costs of teachers, computers and the maintenance are very different by region.
- A second part of the revenue comes from the activities organized by students, such as selling food. The biggest costs of the program are the computers. And, depending on who wants and can teach, there also will be costs for an additional teacher.
The trainings were organized for primary teachers of the new Chaski-schools. In addition, there were other teachers invited to participate in the training through advertisements in newspapers. For teachers this training is personally interesting because it helps them to get a further examination within the regular career opportunities as a teacher.
Besides the three introductory courses , later on there were training sessions organized in other subjects or in updating of the same items to let the teachers keep up with developments in the field.
The government took also, with the introduction of computers, the initiative to organize this training. Because of this development and the lack of finance the training of Ayni is not organized anymore. However, there are still additional courses for students. At the moment there is a robotics course organized.
Computers and programs
After the training the computers were given on loan to the schools so that they were also responsible for the computers. Internet was available through a dial-up line. The pilot was a success and in 2001 the actual project was launched. After this base was developed, two new projects were added to the program.
First, the Global Teenager Project. This is a digital network of students and teachers around the world where internal learning circles are created. Twice a year the students are coming together in digital classes through a wiki or Web 2.0 tools. This contains children from different countries working together on a theme. The students in this program completed in 10 weeks six steps of the learning circle in which they keep in touch with other students elsewhere in the world by Wiki or e-mail. In the case of the Chaski-schools the teachers were given direction to guide the students. This project has been phased out within the Chaski program and is not or hardly used anymore.
This is perhaps due to the introduction of the second project. This has developed since about 2005, AprenderCreando, it means creating learning. The teachers have taken the initiative to develop their own teaching materials. With the knowledge they had, they define their learning objectives of the students and developed educational software. These are stored in a library and can then be used by all participating schools. It is not only new software that’s being created, but also the existing learning materials were digitized and were made accessible to the entire network. So far the biggest part of the development of the program has focused on the further development, systematization and accessibility of educational software.
This educational software is available through an online library, J -click. This library is open to all Chaski- schools and also for all other schools using the Ayni-website and at the request of the Bolivian government.
The latest development of the program is that, at the request of female students who are in their last year, 150 graduate students are trained first-line support when they leave high school. In this way, the link will be put back into the response to the program, namely young people into work. In addition, the Bolivian government picked up also the idea and she is busy with ICT integration in public schools. For example, all teachers and students can use in their final year of high school a computer. There are also telecentres equipped on public schools.
Actors
Throughout this whole process, Ayni works constantly together with the six partners of the program. These are:
-Students;
-the directors of the schools;
-the teachers;
-the parents;
-ONG Ayni in Bolivia;
-The town council.
Time is too short to describe them all. I will describe one of them. The parents are one of the most important partners in the Chaski-program. First, following the legal developments in Bolivia, they are supposed to participate in the discussion about the way education is organized. There is also a practical need to involve parents in the program. The government gives no financial support for the implementation of computers and the internet. Therefore, to make the program work, it requires a monthly contribution from the parents. Overall this contribution was very well supported by the parents because they understand the benefits of computers. In addition, at the schools were held the so called feria, a kind of open days, where students showed their parents what they had learned about the computers that year.
Why an evaluation? The actual policy of the Bolivian government is the implementation of computers in schools. Chaski therefor will no longer focuses on the introduction of computers and the Internet or training teachers in Bolivia.
After closing the Chaski-program, it was for Ayni time for an evaluation.An evaluation will be used for possible feedback to the government about possible pitfalls.
In addition, an evaluation can provide knowledge for the next step of Ayni. With the closing of the Chaski-program, there will be room for the foundation to develop the next program. Plans for this are already set up. One of the plans contains an Ayni Academy, which should help young graduates to improve their skills and to increase finding a job.
Finally the results of an evaluation can help other projects in other countries with a similar approach.
The aim of the evaluation is: To find out how the introduction of ICT as education-tool within Chaski, has helped to improve the quality of education in a structural way.
Before I will explain how the evaluation was set up, I first tell you some more about the context of the research area.
Context
I will tell you about the country itself and about the education of Bolivia in particular.
The country Bolivia
Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in the middle of South America. With a surface area 26 times as large as the Netherlands and only 10.5 million people, it is sparsely populated. Nearly half the population lives in rural areas. In addition, the country has the most ethnic diversity in all of South America. Something that until recently was ignored in the country. Only since about 16 years, there are, besides Spanish, more than 36 indigenous languages recognized as official languages. And until the last education reform in 2009, the primary language at schools has always been Spanish.
Bolivia is bordered by its five neighboring countries: Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina and Peru. The constitutional capital is Sucre and the political capital is La Paz. Despite that only 1/3 of Bolivia is being located in the Andes, Bolivia is still counted among the highland countries. The largest cities of the country are located in the Andes Mountains, and they have been important for the development of the country.
Yet Bolivia has not always been the 'forgotten' country in South America. Bolivia has a rich history of different ethnic groups. The tracks are still visible in contemporary South America. Thus the language Quechua is still used as their main language by some 10 million people between the north of Ecuador and the north of Argentina.
The differences between the various regions and the opportunities for different population groups remain a topic of discussion. Because although the economy continues to grow and overall there is a decrease in the percentage of poor people, there is a big difference between the city and countryside. In rural areas is not only a larger number of households that is poor, but development of these regions in terms of economic activity and poverty-reduction becomes smaller every year.
The suppression of the many indigenous groups remains a serious problem despite numerous attempts by the government to create equality.
In 2006, Evo Morales was elected as the new president. With this choice of a representative of coca-farmers and a descent of one of the indigenous tribes in the Andes, a new era had begun for Bolivia. The colonization and capitalism were abandoned and socialism was the new era. And although the initiative of Morales was to align the indigenous people and the rest of the country, this has not yet succeeded in the past 10 years. Yet he remains with 60 % of the vote’s one of the most popular leaders of Bolivia. The current deadline of Morales expires in 2020. And for now it’s after that unclear which direction Bolivia will go.
Education in Bolivia
Primary education in Bolivia is free and compulsory for all children between 6 and 14 years old. Recent surveys showed that there are about 2300 kindergartens and about 13.000 primary schools. There were nearly 1.3 million children in primary school and nearly two hundred and twenty thousand (220.000) in secondary education. About 140.000 students go to higher education. Universities are in the main big cities. English is taught in secondary schools as part of the study program. Many highly educated people leave Bolivia after earning their degrees and work in Argentina or Chile where the jobs are paid much more.
In education of Bolivia, there are still large differences in the opportunities for young people in the countryside and in the city. Many children live too far away from school. Some schools are boarding schools, where children can stay during the week. At other schools, children travel every day for several hours by bus and walk long distances to sit half a day at school. Nowadays about 90% of the children are visiting primary school. But a lot of them quit after a while, for example to help in agriculture. Also, in some villages there is still a lack of education.
Another problem is that the quality of the schools in rural regions is less than the schools in the city.
Also the education in Bolivia had to deal with other problems, according to the World Bank, such as:
-exclusion of stakeholders, like parents and children, in making decisions;
-poor administration;
-inefficient finances;
-problems with materials, training of teachers and infrastructure that have particular impact on girls and rural populations.
These problems were the reason to the largest reorganization of the education in Bolivia in 1994. These are the developments that Ayni also signed on to its program. Through the customized education law several elements were introduced over a period of seven years.
There were changes in the system of the classes, the training of teachers, new materials, a pilot for bilingual education (Spanish and an indigenous language) and the organization of the ministry and its cooperation with the schools. Perhaps the most important change was the position of the parents. Parents had to be more involved to the schools through parent councils in schools, called familiapatris. In addition, there were also councils founded at the level of the municipality and the department. Also the indigenous people had their place in these councils.
Methodology (1) As indicated earlier, the aim of the evaluation is: To find out how the introduction of ICT as education-tool within Chaski, has helped to improve the quality of education in a structural way.
In order to research this, we formed several research-questions:
- What were the goals of the Chaski-program at the schools and in whichextent were those goals achieved?
- In what way use the teachers the Chaski-program to organize their education?
- In which extent succeeded the program to improve the knowledge of subjects, use of ICT and the preparation for the labor market?
- Which factors within Bolivia had influence on the implementation of the Chaski-program?
Methodology (2)
We choose to evaluate the period 2003 until 2013. The end of year 2013 was defined by the recent introduction of computers in schools.