TELESECUNDARIA - The Possibility of High School in Chacocente
By Jon Bishop
One of the most pressing and frustrating problems in Chacocente, just as in most of the rest of the rural developing world, is the lack of access to high school for the kids finishing grade school. The closest high school is in Santa Teresa or El Astillero, both of which are too far away for daily travel to be a viable option. Very few young people have relatives living in these towns, so they have nowhere to stay if they moved to town. Building a high school in the reserve is far too expensive to be considered by the Ministry of Education. SCP has considered the possibility of providing scholarships for young people interested in high school, but there are far too many potential young people interested in secondary schooling to serve even if our annual budget were quadrupled.
There is another option that I ran across while visiting another part of Nicaragua a few years ago. It is called Telesecundaria, literally, high school by television. It is a series of videos that have high school classes on them that are produced in Mexico. One teacher can run an entire high school program with the complete set of videos. The Ministry of Education has embraced this program, and it has been implemented in a few communities in Nicaragua. Alma Susana Chavez, one of our facilitators, and I visited Gloria Rivas, the Ministry of Education representative in Santa Teresa, to discuss the possibility of starting a telesecundaria program in the Chacocente reserve. Gloria was very receptive to the idea, and encouraged us to develop a proposal.
The obvious pitfall is that we can have a television, teacher, and a stack of DVDs, but they are all useless if there is nowhere to plug in the TV. My idea is to run this system with photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. Grupo Fenix (www.grupofenix.org), a nonprofit organization in Nicaragua dedicated to renewable energy, has started a for-profit company called Suni Solar that produces solar panels in Nicaragua. Their estimate for a TV with DVD player, solar panels, inverter, battery bank and all cables. is $1,505 installed. Suni has installed a solar array for another telesecundaria program, so they are familiar with our needs. This looks like a modest up front cost for a project that could have tremendous impact.
Alma and I will research this project and keep you posted.
This member of the sewing group
in La Poma displays a pair of pants that she made in her sewing
class. When I first tried to take the picture, she was holding the
pants high, and her face was mostly obscured. I got most of the
way through asking her to lower her pants, when I realized the
grievous social error I had just committed. Everyone in the room
broke up laughing! One of the most pressing and frustrating problems in Chacocente, just as in most of the rest of the rural developing world, is the lack of access to high school for the kids finishing grade school. The closest high school is in Santa Teresa or El Astillero, both of which are too far away for daily travel to be a viable option. Very few young people have relatives living in these towns, so they have nowhere to stay if they moved to town. Building a high school in the reserve is far too expensive to be considered by the Ministry of Education. SCP has considered the possibility of providing scholarships for young people interested in high school, but there are far too many potential young people interested in secondary schooling to serve even if our annual budget were quadrupled.
There is another option that I ran across while visiting another part of Nicaragua a few years ago. It is called Telesecundaria, literally, high school by television. It is a series of videos that have high school classes on them that are produced in Mexico. One teacher can run an entire high school program with the complete set of videos. The Ministry of Education has embraced this program, and it has been implemented in a few communities in Nicaragua. Alma Susana Chavez, one of our facilitators, and I visited Gloria Rivas, the Ministry of Education representative in Santa Teresa, to discuss the possibility of starting a telesecundaria program in the Chacocente reserve. Gloria was very receptive to the idea, and encouraged us to develop a proposal.
The obvious pitfall is that we can have a television, teacher, and a stack of DVDs, but they are all useless if there is nowhere to plug in the TV. My idea is to run this system with photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. Grupo Fenix (www.grupofenix.org), a nonprofit organization in Nicaragua dedicated to renewable energy, has started a for-profit company called Suni Solar that produces solar panels in Nicaragua. Their estimate for a TV with DVD player, solar panels, inverter, battery bank and all cables. is $1,505 installed. Suni has installed a solar array for another telesecundaria program, so they are familiar with our needs. This looks like a modest up front cost for a project that could have tremendous impact.
Alma and I will research this project and keep you posted.
ONE WAY TO GET A SMILE.....
- Jon Bishop
