The cocha-banner was born out of the volunteer work of Scott Liddle. He came to teach English and, together with his students in the Universidad Mayor de San Simón. He had the idea of supporting his students in the improvement of their English knowledge then the first edition of the cocha-banner came out.
After some editions, we recognized that this magazine had the potential to become a permanent project under the sponsorship of Projects Abroad.
As it was, the cocha-banner went through various transformations with respect to the design, monthly publication, and purpose, looking for the way this magazine would fit in the community of Cochabamba and keeping above all the link for the students of San Simón University mostly with Linguistic carer.
In April 2006, the cocha-banner made its first drastic change and it began to work with a more professional design, and an opportunity arose to adequately creating a volunteer project through Projects Abroad.
In this project, people interested in pursuing volunteer work as journalists in South America could came to Bolivia to do this in English.
In December of the same year we had another twist that was to work with the community of Cochabamba; with organisations and projects linked to the improvement of the social situation in the city, specially diverse project like orphanages, care, health, work based ideas or training that help people to find work, improve education, health, communication, environmental education, and initiatives in favour of peace, etc.
The answers to this initiative were immediate and many projects and organisation that were looking for development contacted the cocha-banner to see if we can write about them and the work they do, who it benefits, how they do it, etc. these initiatives really need the community to know about their work.
However, we never cut our link with San Simón Universty.
Our relations with The University these days are reinforced with Archaeological Museum and the investigator Walter Sánchez, who contributes with a monthly article we publish in the last section.
At the same time, these articles are translated by students of Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas under the supervision of teacher and afterwards they receive guidance and advice from our volunteer to improve their translation into English.
For the students this work has a credit value and permits the magazine to present interesting local topics.
Cocha-banner invites anyone who would like to send photos if the city of Cochabamba, details and moments very cochabambinos, and the best photos will be published on the front cover of the magazine.
Photos must be sent to
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with name, characteristics of the photo.
The quality needs to be very clear and defined in JPG format with a minimum of 300 pixels per inch.
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