By Minsis Ramos – StS Coordinator of Educational Advancement
This year, Shoulder to Shoulder is again undertaking the challenge of supporting students in acquiring pieces of knowledge through the Legos Robotics project. Yet, getting these pieces has been a very difficult road. In the past two years, we have bought Lego kits in the USA, but it has been complete chaos trying to get the kits to Honduras.Each school had a team of between 25-30 students – even though the instructions say that the maximum number of students per kit is 2-4! It was clear that some students didn’t even have the chance to touch a piece, much less build the robot. They just observed how their teammates assembled the parts. It was a really sad situation not being able to provide the needed tools to enrich all students’ knowledge.
As a response to this hunger for technology, we started looking for some possible options on the ground. We started looking for online stores, cheaper ways of shipping equipment from the USA, educational stores, and even asking for help from the people in town. We found kits within Honduras, but they cost four times the cost in the US. Finally, after many calls and emails, we found a store that sold robotics equipment at double the US price. We decided that this was reasonable, given our problems getting Legos into Honduras. The kits were in the capital city of Tegucigalpa — seven hours away from the little town Camasca!
We found someone willing to drive and he purchased 4 kits for us – so that each team could have one more kit. It was a great happiness to know we had solved the issue that was giving us nightmares. It was incredible that we now had in our hands the equipment needed for the kids to get new pieces of knowledge. The knowledge of coding, using computers, working in teams, and using strategies will equip them, not just to complete the challenge, but to be competent in life.
We are using small pieces to build a big world!
