The Project
Volunteer in Bolivia

Who We are Helping and Why

Please note: our education projects in Bolivia are unique to Global Vision International. All funding of these projects comes directly from Global Vision International and volunteer contributions, which are included in the programme fee. We receive no other outside source of income, apart from that raised through GVI and volunteer contributions. Suffice to say, without this funding from GVI and the volunteer contributions, the projects simply would not exist.

Formal education exists in Bolivia, but the large class sizes and lack of teachers available means many children suffer from the fact they don’t get the full personal attention they need, meaning there is a huge demand for GVI educational projects and volunteer work to improve the current situation. An alarming growing trend in the rural areas is that due to this lack of educational attention, plus the obvious financial constraints, more and more children drop-out as they have to work to help support their families. The same can be said of the adults some of whom may have only reached first or second grade, yet the majority not even that. As more and more government emphasis is put on urban schools; rural schools are becoming forgotten. Higher wages are offered to teachers in city schools, meaning fewer and fewer teachers are willing to work in rural schools. The schools in which you will be working have on average two teachers to cover all subjects and all grades, including kindergarten.

Global Vision International with the full support of the leaders of the communities and the schools aims to tackle these issues. As with our similar projects in Latin America, our aims are first and foremost in education, putting particular focus on literacy and educational reinforcement for the children of each community. Our volunteers do the teaching alongside the local teacher and on their own, to alleviate the strain on the current teachers. Therefore we can group the children by age and grade and pay closer attention to them and the required subjects. Coupled with paying for the school supplies, it is hoped that more children will attend and will receive the attention needed for their standard of education to improve. Before initiating each project, the school and the community put together an idea of areas of education to be addressed, which invariably includes basic literacy and numeracy, paying particular attention to Maths and English. Further areas may include Spanish grammar, geography, sciences and agriculture.