One hundred planters. One child each.

These are not children who are broken. These are children whose country has not yet built the room where they can think.

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child

Nobody's grandparents changed. What changed is what it costs to say it.

Racism and sexism are the two forces that decide, early, who gets to think of herself as capable. Zera's diagnosis since 2013: they are not side issues. They are the primary obstacles to self-realization, and a child can be taught to see them and to stand.

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child

Thirteen children who lived inside with their mothers. For months the founder and her volunteer friends carried everything in themselves: the projector, the materials, food, games, art supplies.

One afternoon the children made collages of what they longed for. The tangible pages filled with airplanes, cars, school supplies, flowers, toys. For the intangible, they wrote words: happiness, joy, adventure. And on page after page, one word kept returning: safety.

Then a boy of ten showed his collage. An airplane. A soccer player. And in the space for the intangible, one word: tears. Asked why, he knew exactly what he was doing. "Because tears are part of life."

That is how children think when someone takes them seriously. Zera's whole pedagogy lives inside his answer: an education that does not deny what is hard, and does not surrender to it either.

He was ten, and he was right.

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child

When the course ended, the mothers wrote a letter asking Zera to return and teach the next stage.

That letter is Zera's founding document. Not a needs assessment. Not a diagnosis of damage. Mothers, in the hardest of circumstances, demanding more learning for their children. Zera has been answering that letter ever since.

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child

1

Regulate

Emotional regulation first. A child who can name what she feels can think.

2

Think

Critical thinking: ask better questions, evaluate information, respond with judgment.

3

See

Guided modules on history, racism and sexism: name what is aimed at you.

4

Act

Protect what must be protected, change what must change, build together.

Its ground: Aymara-led, since 2013. In 1931, in Warisata on the altiplano, an Aymara educator named Avelino Siñani built a community-governed school so powerful the landowning class dismantled it within a decade; Bolivia's education law now carries his name. The founder carries his surname. Aymara people have always built world-class education on their own terms.

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child

The city of La Paz sent its own facilitators. The Ministry of Education wrote to thank Zera. Teachers, parents and principals reported better behavior, better communication and better grades. Zera says openly that rigorous evaluation is still ahead; that honesty is part of the proof.

“What these classes did for my son, no psychologist or therapist had done. He is no longer violent, and he hugs me.”A mother in the Obrajes group, 2015

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child

Today Zera trains the people a government cannot remove: rural authorities, young leaders from El Alto, teachers in public schools of every size, cultural centers. They train with Zera, go home, and become the facilitators in their own towns.

The program lives in a person now, not in a permit.

Trainsrural authorities, young leaders, teachers, cultural centers

Paystheir transportation to and from training

Givesthe materials and feeds them while they learn to teach

Celebratesevery group that graduates, with families in the room

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child

Led by the served

Aymara-founded, Aymara-led. No headquarters abroad, no intermediary. The founder, first Aymara Bolivian to graduate from Harvard, lives in New York.

What is taught

Emotional regulation, critical thinking, and the tools to name racism and sexism. What every parent wants for their own child.

Leverage

$10 a month in Bolivia is a child's full program and her town's next facilitator. Nothing at that price in New York reaches that far.

Proof with a scar

Twelve thousand children, then the access ended. Zera did not pretend. It redesigned. That honesty is the credibility.

Now

Bolivia is in economic and political crisis. The design that survives a change of government is the one worth funding this year.

You are not funding an intermediary. You are funding the child and the teacher.

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child

a month, kept for a year, is one child's full program and its replication:

Zera does not spend one cent more per child than this, and not one cent less.

Her own workbookwith her name on it

The materialsfor every session

A healthy snack at every sessionand, when the day is long, a meal

A facilitatortrained from her own community

A graduationwith her mother in the room

The replicationbus fare, materials and meals for the next facilitator who takes it home

US donations are tax-deductible through our fiscal host, Myriad USA, and processed by Every.org. A small administrative share covers the US compliance that makes that possible.

Become a Sembrador$10 a month reaches one child