Nicaragua

City: Granada

In the summer of 2019 at the Carlos Bravo School, the students learned how to design and program robots to turn, loop codes, and incorporate various sensors. We were fortunate to hear presentations from leading Nicaraguan engineers, company leaders, and organization heads. The students and teachers we trained began practicing six days a week in preparation for the national World Robot Olympiad held in mid September 2019. All their time and determination paid off as they earned 2nd place in a field of 80 teams!

In the summer of 2021, we returned to the Carlos Bravo School to provide a Mindstorms EV3 STEM-robotics program.

Testimonial

Kathleen Davis, President, Students of Granada, Nicaragua

“A tremendous thank you to The Community Bots and in particular, Jack Cooley and Karen Orozco, for an incredible two weeks of training at Escuela Carlos Bravo – a nucleus public school serving more than 900 students in the heart of Granada, Nicaragua. Our dream to introduce robotics programming to underserved communities here was realized despite the challenges facing Nicaragua during the last 18 months. Equipment donations from The Community Bots and their partner, John Richardson of St. Joseph Academy, enabled us to implement a 160-hour digital literacy program to students and teachers prior to the robotics training. The Community Bots generous donation of LEGO robotics kits made it possible to enrol 35 students in the robotics program and ultimately paved the way for an ongoing after-school program that has committed to competing in the LEGO World Robot Olympiad. It was a pleasure to watch master teachers at work — Jack and Karen — not only maintained student and teacher engagement for the entire two weeks but did so in a way that educators here can apply new teaching and learning strategies in their classrooms. The course design itself was superb — integrating hands-on activities with contextual and motivational presentations — helping to build girls’ confidence in their abilities and understanding more about opportunities in the technology sectors. The Community Bots model is powerful. They plant the seeds and empower educators and students to take control of their future learning. In our case, our students and teachers have never used computers and are now on their way to building a model that all public schools in Nicaragua can duplicate. This is truly life-changing. Thank you Jack, Karen, John, and The Community Bots.”

testimonial