Stories of Love

They Can't Read. They'll Never
Be Able To Use It.

Five hundred years ago, the indigenous Ngobe Bugle people fled into the mountains of Panama to escape European invaders. For centuries they lived in seclusion, cut off from the rest of civilization and passed over by progress.

To visit their villages, you walk or ride horses for ten hours, cross five mountains and three rivers. There's no other way in. Their homes are built of sticks and thatch. They cook over open fires. Scraping a living off the land is difficult, so 97% live in poverty and malnutrition is wide-spread. Because they're so remote, government programs didn’t reach them.

But a few years back, something shifted. A small grass-roots initiative started among the people themselves to provide education for their children. A few indigenous teachers, often at great personal sacrifice, left their homes and farms to stay in another village during the week to teach the children.

“Our own families are poor,” said one of the indigenous teachers. “But how can we leave these precious children without education?”

Mona Foundation became involved with this effort in 2001, providing stipends for the indigenous teachers to help support their families when they were away and offering teacher training to upgrade their skills. The government began to take notice of the efforts of the indigenous people and eventually reorganized education in the region to reach all but the most remote villages.

Mona Foundation sought a way to bring technology to the Ngobe Bugle people to help connect them to the wealth of education resources that exist online. In 2003, through a grant from Microsoft®, a solar-powered computer lab was built as part of a Community Technology and Learning Center and the Ngobe Bugle were online with the world!

Over 500 indigenous people walked hours, many in bare feet, to come to the inauguration of the Learning Center. The women in particular crowded around the computers. They stood for hours fascinated, watching information and pictures from around the world scroll across the screens. A class was suggested to teach the women to use a computer. Someone said, “They don't know how to read. They'll never be able to use it.”

But when classes were started, the women walked hours to come. And the women's classes are the best attended of any at the Learning Center. The women learned to read so they could use computers to get knowledge from the outside world.

When there's a love of learning, nothing can stand in its way. Not an inability to read, not poverty, and not the lack of belief from other people. The drive of the spirit to know and learn is strong in the Ngobe Bugle people. They were alone for 500 years. In the last ten, they started tutorial schools in their villages. They improved their skills as teachers. They engaged with modern technology to leap from a subsistence lifestyle into the 21st century. And they have just received accreditation to launch the first ever indigenous university in Panama and are now working earnestly to raise it up.

top