The average Nicaraguan will not graduate beyond 6th grade, she may earn two dollars a day in wages if she’s able to find work, and there is a strong chance that she’ll live in the same house with her parents, her grandparents, her brothers and sisters, and eventually her own children. One walk through a classroom in Nicaragua paints a vivid picture of emptiness. Many classrooms do not have desks for students, and most public schools operate without more than a few textbooks in total. Learning tools, such as puzzles and Legos, are not accessible for most Nicaraguan youth, and basic resources like writing utensils and paper are often unavailable.
LA VIDA Education is showing that it’s possible to demonstrate strong educational outcomes within individual communities and raise the educational prospects for thousands of students. Instead of buying resources for individual schools, where donations are often poorly administered or even stolen, we serve all schools in a region by providing a central location where teachers bring their classes to receive access to the educational resources they really need. For example, if a teacher wants to teach a lesson on rainforests, we will buy all the materials they need, but we will make this available to all the schools in the area by keeping the resources at the center and helping teachers create an effective lesson that can be taught across schools. This model not only increases collaboration, but it also meets the most critical educational need in the country, better administration of resources. The results of this approach continue to pay astounding dividends. Students have traveled all the way from Managua, an hour long trip by bus, to access tutoring and library resources at the center, and the center’s success has spawned replication efforts in other parts of the country. By demonstrating an effective approach in one region of Nicaragua, we are beginning to see education change throughout the country as others follow our lead.
The average Nicaraguan will not graduate beyond 6th grade, she may earn two dollars a day in wages if she’s able to find work, and there is a strong chance that she’ll live in the same house with her parents, her grandparents, her brothers and sisters, and eventually her own children. One walk through a classroom in Nicaragua paints a vivid picture of emptiness. Many classrooms do not have desks for students, and most public schools operate without more than a few textbooks in total. Learning tools, such as puzzles and Legos, are not accessible for most Nicaraguan youth, and basic resources like writing utensils and paper are often unavailable.
LA VIDA Education is showing that it’s possible to demonstrate strong educational outcomes within individual communities and raise the educational prospects for thousands of students. Instead of buying resources for individual schools, where donations are often poorly administered or even stolen, we serve all schools in a region by providing a central location where teachers bring their classes to receive access to the educational resources they really need. For example, if a teacher wants to teach a lesson on rainforests, we will buy all the materials they need, but we will make this available to all the schools in the area by keeping the resources at the center and helping teachers create an effective lesson that can be taught across schools. This model not only increases collaboration, but it also meets the most critical educational need in the country, better administration of resources. The results of this approach continue to pay astounding dividends. Students have traveled all the way from Managua, an hour long trip by bus, to access tutoring and library resources at the center, and the center’s success has spawned replication efforts in other parts of the country. By demonstrating an effective approach in one region of Nicaragua, we are beginning to see education change throughout the country as others follow our lead.