Learn It - Share It

We help kids and young people in rural Bolivia to acquire financial literacy.

Students will create an educational video for their peers where they will educate them about personal finance issues. Students will share the knowledge you acquired in our training so they start making better, more rational, more informed financial choices. This model has been tested in the United States and can be replicated everywhere

We aim to help rural students in becoming savvier in terms of financial decisions. The area we are planning to help lacks infrastructure, the closest financial institutions and gas stations are 90 minutes away, and the internet is spotty. That does not stop people from being extremely entrepreneurial and creative. We want to empower them with the basics of financial education and help them reach the world with their products, help them save, and make smart financial decisions. 

We empower students using the technology that they know how to use and the social media they are on.

We teach them the basics of financial literacy and they spread the knowledge among their peers. 

The solution favors the educational sector of the municipality of Machaca, including teachers, students, and parents. Machaca has around 5,000 inhabitants. We plan to work together with the municipal government. This project arises through the analysis of the needs of the population, focusing on the desperate need for improved educational practices. Teachers are required by government bodies to provide results, and yet they do not have soft or hard skills to deliver. Teachers need more training and teaching materials and we are working on delivering that.  We have been working on training teachers to flip their classroom, gamify it and use the existing technology to maximize the time they have with their students. This personal finance project is one of the many initiatives that we have to train teachers to reach their students to empower them and use the creativity and entrepreneurial practices innate in the people. We strongly believe that through education this area can soar. 

Our mission is to empower students through training teachers. We have been very successful in reaching teachers (over 30000), and proved that we don't need to be under the same roof to train them. We know that teachers are eager to gain new skills and we have access to the experts that can provide them. We have a very limited budget to create solutions with the technology that we have.

We have created and implemented ways of modeling new teaching, provided materials for classes. We have aid instructors in creating a more up-to-date curriculum, having learned the lessons from the pandemic.

Things happen, and they will continue to happen. So, through information and planning, we can help Bolivians to be better prepared next time.

The pandemic showed us a desperate situation in our education system and we are eager to help. We just got started, social media has allowed us to reach experts who resonated with our mission and we have been training teachers. We mostly work with Bolivian teachers but are growing steadily and are reaching others.

We understand who our students are. They belong in a generation that enjoys technology and learns from influencers. We empower students to learn and share it in the ways they communicate, through social media. We propose that students become influencers in their classrooms and share short videos with information that can be useful for everyone.

Our model has been used at different levels: undergraduate, community college, high schools in F2F, hybrid and hyflex classes. Our students enjoy doing the project and learn a lot from it. We believe that financial literacy is not about learning formulas but about creating healthy habits for everyday decisions. 

Students create videos every day, we will use the devices they already have, and the social media channels that already exist to help students share financial literacy knowledge.

We want students to be influencers in their area.

These are some of the testimonials from our students: 

•“The project was a great opportunity to show the groups creative and knowledgeable side.” 
• “I feel like I'm learning practical knowledge that I've been wanting to know for a while.”
•“The course with the most real-world applications I've taken” 
•“Helped me prepare for the future”
•“I think this project offers crucial information in terms of having a healthy financial future.”
 “We learned some practical tips about personal finance.”

Here are the slides from a presentation at an academic conference about Learn It Share It https://docs.google.com/presen...

Since the technology used is low-tech and students know how to use it, we don't see any risks.

We know from our previous work in the area that students have smartphones. The telecommunication company that reaches the area is the state-owned one, Entel. We are working on providing internet access cards to extend the time in which students can connect so they can receive information and create videos.

In Machaca, we can reach  300 students and about 20 teachers in a year. In 5 years we can cover more municipalities and reach around 20,000 students. Within the same municipality, this can help another 300 people and give teaching materials to more teachers in the municipality.

Our 2022 goal is to train at least 1,000 teachers within the Murillo province of the Department of La Paz in Bolivia. The training will be oriented in 3 specific areas: 1, Methodologies: Gamification, Flipped classrooms and Technologies; 2. Emotional intelligence; 3. Financial intelligence.
In 5 years we want to cover training in teachers from all the rural areas of the Department of La Paz and Department of Santa Cruz. We are planning to reach about 20,000 teacher

- Number of trained teachers
- Number of students that each teacher can reach
- School performance
- Number of trained urban municipalities
- Number of trained rural municipalities
- Number of schools participating in the project

We are 5 people working at NGO Mentor in Bolivia. We also have 3 teacher trainers who do in site training and follow ups. We have two advisors who are a Lecturer in Economics from a liberal art college in Boston and a Professor from Spain.

We are an organization that in one year has trained around 30,000 teachers from 28 different countries from Latin America and Spain. We have contact with organizations and professionals from Latin America, the USA and Spain.
The organization emerged as a result of the analysis of education problems in Bolivia.

Our President Luis Fernando pantoja Oroza is a lawyer. Maria Wictoria Kowalska is an economist with ample experience in education.

Our advisor in financial inclusion is Florencia Gabriele, PhD. She is a an Lecturer in Economics, has worked in finance and as a money coach.

Our staff is composed of people are different countries and professions. We have certified experience in training and also in the preparation of projects. 

We seek to empower young people from Macacha including indigenous population and girls. 

We are applying to the 2021 TPrize Challenge because we need training, partnerships and funds to continue helping rural students in Bolivia

Through partnerships, we will be able to polish our project and reach more students.

We would like to partner with the IADB because with the #movingonline movement they have reached thousands of instructors in Latin America successful and have trained them to transform their teaching.