This year is the first year that the Alma Foundation is working with students. They are university students who are training for five years to be teachers in Bolivian public schools at the Clara Parada Higher Teacher Training School in Pinto. In order to get to this point last year we did a lot of […]
This year we decided to carry out an activity requested by our local partner, the Beni Department of Education. The activity consisted of a contest of pedagogical proposals prepared and applied by teachers in their classrooms, we launched the call expecting low participation, because in similar events called at the national level, no more than […]
Around the world administrators, teachers, parents, and students are beginning to step back into the classroom. Many are excited to “get back to normal” and forget about online learning. In most schools in Peru and Bolivia, due to isolated locations and lack of access to hardware, online learning was never an option to begin with. […]
One of the most interesting pieces of using our Alma methodology within the official state curriculum and adapting it to remote and virtual learning has been seeing how many obstacles to distance learning are actually just obstacles to learning exasperated by the distance. We always need to keep students engaged, always need to get parents […]
By early August, Alma will have trained over 10,000 teachers in Bolivia and Peru; helping them to connect the gap between theoretical national curriculums and practical classroom implementation, all within the context of remote and virtual learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our distance learning proposal was adopted first by the largest province in Cusco, […]
As I write this, the number of reported cases and deaths in Peru and Bolivia is not “flattening” and the situation is dire. Trinidad, our base in Bolivia, has the highest per-capita caseload in the country and the total cases in Peru puts them 10th in the world (twice as many cases as in China). […]
Robert, Armando, Rider and Wilber are all Alma Foundation Alumni’s. Robert and Armando are studying nursing, Rider is from Monte Cristo and studies veterinary medicine. Wilber is from Nuevo Amanecer and studies business administration. These four students work exceptionally hard to to reach their goals and, once they have finished their education, plan go back […]
My name is Nataly, I am 14 years old, I have lived in the Alalay Children’s Home for the last 6 months. I study here, eat here, and sleep here. This is my home. Before living in Alalay my life was not easy. My siblings and I were constantly trying to run away from home […]
In the months before the start of the school year, Alma is already hard at work training our teachers and developing culturally meaningful lesson plans in Peru and Bolivia. This year, however, we are happy to have the added challenge of working with the local branch of the Ministry of Education in the UGEL Quispicanchi. […]
The political crisis we are going through as a country, the appointment of new authorities, the new deadlines for national and subnational elections, set a scenario with uncertainties not only for the inhabitants of Bolivia but also for the private entities that operate in our country. For the Alma Foundation, the good news is […]
To view the 2016 review for El Manguare, please click here.
Each month, our team compiles stories and updates from our projects to create a monthly dispatch. To read the full February Dispatch, please click here.
Alma would like to thank Ines and Xavier for thinking of Alma on their special day! Ines and Xavier are both engineers and university graduates who value education. For this reason, they have decided to ask for your support in the Alma Alumni Program. The Alma Alumni Program provides financial support and mentorship to students […]
“Five years later Alma has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.” Five years ago, disappointed with the work being done by two Peruvian charities that I was supporting, I founded the Alma Children’s Education Foundation with the intent on improving the lives of children in remote indigenous communities in Peru. I hoped that a few […]
Three times a year our students present what they’ve been up to in our projects to their parents during the school’s “Achievement Day”. The first round of Achievement Days passed recently and in Tuksa, it went as great as we hoped! Students in Tuksa engaged their parents with their presentations and live demonstrations of activities […]
Hi Friends! Come join us for an afternoon of sun, fun and volleyball! On August 14th, the Young Leaders at Alma are hosting a beach volleyball tournament at Ashbridges Bay. Get ready to show off your volleyball skills! Volleyball players will be sorted into teams. Each team will represent one of our education projects in Peru or […]
We headed out for Huadhua in the morning, aiming to cover 4000 feet of elevation gain in time for lunch at school with the kids. I had no idea how rich with sights – and learning from Ian – our trip would be. As we passed through the towns outside of Cusco, Ian told us […]
Benjamin is a recent grad from the Ivey Business School at Western University. After spending his final semester of study in Barcelona, Benjamin realized his passion for travel, especially in expanding his perspective by meeting and learning from new people. In his spare time Benjamin enjoys cooking, scuba-diving, playing basketball, and reading. His recent reads […]
Our next stop was Kenko, a small village where Alma had set up a collectivo – school bus – to take the children to school in order to increase attendance. Unfortunately, this goal was not met, and we were there to figure out why the project didn’t work out. As we drove through the town […]
Today Phil, Octavio and I headed towards the Valle Sagrado to visit three villages where Alma has operated for the last few years. The projects have all finished this year, so our goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of the projects and meet with the children who participated. Our first stop was Patabamba, a relatively […]