Agreement ESFM Simón Bolívar- Wikimedistas de Bolivia, an alliance that allows teachers in training to incorporate the critical reading of Wikipedia

A few weeks ago, the Wikimedistas Bolivia team signed an inter-institutional cooperation agreement with the Escuela Superior de Formación de Maestros Simón Bolívar to implement the Leamos Wikipedia program for the next three years.

The agreement was signed after the execution of a first workshop of the Leamos Wikipedia program with a group of teachers in training and teachers of the Teachers College, mostly young people, who evaluated the process positively. This first course was achieved after the negotiations that we made as Wikimedians of Bolivia with the General Direction of the School, in April 2025.

The Agreement contemplates, among its most important points, the execution of the Leamos Wikipedia program with at least three groups in each of the three years, as well as the progressive incorporation of the participants as trainers of the program, which allows the transfer of training skills in the critical reading of information in Wikipedia.

In addition, with the signing of the Agreement, the certificates issued may be recognized and endorsed by the Bolivian Ministry of Education.

This is a significant step as Wikimedians of Bolivia, because it will allow to train teachers with a critical look towards information -not only to the information contained in Wikimedia projects- from their training process as teachers, which is of great importance, assuming that this group is the first one that in its totality mentioned to use Wikipedia information for the various works they develop.

It should also be noted that the students of the Simón Bolívar Teacher Training College begin their teaching practices in classrooms and with school students from the second year of training.

In this process it is important to mention the dynamism and openness of the general director of the Simón Bolívar Teacher Training College, Mirtha Apaza, and the teacher of the Willy Zurita School, who showed great openness and enthusiasm in the implementation of the program; in addition to the trust of our fiscal sponsor, Afro-Bolivian Center for Integral and Community Development, through which we signed this agreement.

Firma del acuerdo de cooperación interinstitucional ESFMSB y WMBO, 2025. Photo: NairaWM BO CC-BY SA 4.0