Hello. We are the eco-active community Kusikuna, a little school based on self-management and situated in the village of Apote, at the foot of the mountain range of Tunari. Our aim is to form freethinking, responsible, solidary, critical people who are capable to face and resolve problems and who have self - esteem.
We call ourselves KUSIKUNA, “let us be happy” in quechua, because we believe in a kind of education that enlightens heart and mind, a kind of education that respects, values and stimulates the development of freedom – within certain limits and responsibilities – while aiming at personal and collective happiness as the ultimate goal for human beings.
We are a communitybecause between us (educators, fathers, mothers and students) we do not cultivate relationships based on power, but relationships based on confidence, friendship and mutual support. We consider ourselves eco because we know that an educational process only has sense when it maintains a relation based on respect, care and learning with Mother Earth. And we call ourselves activebecause we believe that one only really learns while doing.
For some years now, our project is at risk because it has to deal with a lack of official financial resources, little institutional support and lack of knowledge of the public about his educational alternative. The promotion of the reunion of different cultures but also of people from different social and economic layers implies a special effort has to be made, specifically in order to be able to receive children from families with little financial means.
That is why we need your help, not so much to save our school but rather to help us to be able to save it ourselves. So we would like to invite you to support our project I Days of Conferences of Alternative Pedagogy Kusikuna (Conferences PAK for its abbreviation in Spanish), which we are organizing in the city of Cochabamba (Bolivia) on the 7th and 8th of November.
This project has three objectives:
1º Present different alternative pedagogies or teaching methods and our own school Kusikuna to the educational Bolivian community in order to get over with myths and fears related with these alternative ways of teaching and learning. In this way we will be able to attract more students and guarantee our survival on the long term.
2º Use the resources that we will generate during the Conferences and guarantee the continuation of the school during the next school year (salaries of the educators, services, etc.).
3º Establish a network of private and institutional contacts that are interested in alternative educational methods within and outside of Bolivia in order to be able to cooperate and give mutual support. We will be stronger when we are united.
