Sustainable Education
Sustainable education refers to quality education where students learn all subjects in their native language at first, and later on in their education, have the option to also learn in the official language of the country where they live. In an educational system that is sustainable, traditional local knowledge is part of the curriculum at all educational levels. For example in areas such as: history, medicine, folklore, agriculture, literature, archeology, and more. It is very important to conserve and cherish the ancestral knowledge that surrounds many Andean communities; its population has the right to feel proud of their ancestral heritage. With this, we would be conserving their native language, their knowledge. At the same time, they would be maintaining their identity, and would remain whole when they go to school and start learning the dominant official language. They are alienating themselves and are on the verge of loosing their identity, their soul, their well being.
Local Knowledge in the curriculum
An educational system would be sustainable if local knowledge is a big part of the school curriculum. This would undeniably aid students in feeling proud of their history, their people, and their culture and thus would encourage them to contribute to their societies as teachers or academics. There is a need to create a system that supports those students interested in expanding but yet conserving their local knowledge. This support system would also prepare them to co-exist with the dominant society in a way that allows for mutual cultural respect and admiration.Bilingual Teacher Training
Before we embark on projects such as inter-regional/national teacher and student exchanges, we must train teachers as bilingual educators. There is a shortage of trained teachers across the Andes and therefore we need to create projects where teacher training workshops will take place as well as projects aimed at the creation of didactic materials.Didactic materials in the native languages
Creating didactic materials in native languages is very expensive and time consuming. It seems especially difficult to create materials in the Quechua language that would serve large numbers of people due to the fact that there is not one standard way of writing it. There have been attempts to standardize the language, but Quechua academics cannot seem to agree on whether the Quechua language contains five vowel sounds or only three. Many people have already created their own didactic materials; as a first step in gathering materials, we invite all those people who have materials to share them. We would like to create a virtual data bank of materials in different indigenous languages and covering all different subjects, where educators, academics, students, can go and gather material for their use or share material for the use of others.
Comunidad Tawantinsuyu
Comunidad Tawantinsuyu supports communities that welcome that support. The intention is not for the NGO to dictate a system that might work for all communities; rather we would like to create support systems that go hand in hand with each community's objectives and that would lead one to live in harmony with the earth.A message to the academics
To academics interested in Andean knowledge, there are many topics in the Andean region that need to be researched. If you find something that grabs your attention, we ask you to please commit yourselves to leaving a copy of your product to the community researched and in their local language. In this manner, not only would you be contributing to an academic area but also you would be contributing to the creation of local libraries containing local knowledge.If you would like to be part of any project, have a project idea of your own or would like to help in any way, please e-mail us. If we all work together, we can really do it!