ALOHA Spain National Competition
More than 200 children took part in the second edition of ALOHA Spain National Competition, held on Saturday 16th April in the city of Palma de Mallorca. The Theater of La Salle one of the most prestigious schools in Spain – was the stage of an event that was followed not only by parents, relatives and franchisees, but also by school teachers, school directors, future members of ALOHA network in Spain, media
The Championship brought together students from different parts of the Country: Mallorca, Las Palmas,Castelln and Len. Jordi Cruz, TV presenter of Disney Channels Art Attack program, was in charge of hosting the event. Jordi Cruz enjoys an excellent international reputation and his intervention, that included a funny art workshop, was one of the highlights of the National Competition.
This event is an excellent meeting point for parents, students and ALOHA organization. Thanks to it,parents are able to realize the progresses achieved by the pupils. Furthermore, people that approached the program for the first time were highly impressed by the performances of ALOHA children that demonstrate how to calculate using the abacus, fingering method and mentally.
In the last edition of the Championship, more than 800 people were the testimony of how children (levels 1 to 3) were able to perform the arithmetic operations with high-speed and accuracy. It is important to point out that ALOHA Mental Arithmetic is one of the first development brain programs that has been launched in Spain and, as a result, the benefits on the students are really taken into account by the public.
An enjoyable and interactive programme
The aim of the organization of the II ALOHA Spain National Competition was to arrange an enjoyable and interactive event that included different kinds of activities: an abacus workshop for parents, an audiovisual presentation of ALOHA Mental Arithmetic and a lucky draw, consisting of abacus and ALOHA T-Shirts signed by top rank athletes such as Jorge Lorenzo (motorcycling) or Gemma Mengual (synchronized swimming). Through this lucky draw the concept of arithmetic visualization was linked with the term of sports visualization.
The ALOHA Spain National Competition was also a fundraising event. Every registration fee included a donation to Ivn Pastor, an eight years old child that suffers from a strange disease. His parents are collecting money (more than 200.000 euro) in order to pay a very expensive treatment in Boston and ALOHA Mental Arithmetic helped them in their task. The mother of Ivn Pastor gave a speech at the theatre in order to make the public aware of the needs of her son.
Ronit and Samir Motwani, who obtained respectively the first and the second position in the ALOHA International Competition held in China in 2010, received a gigantic certificate as a tribute. Few weeks later, both succeed in the 2011 ALOHA International Competition in Kuala Lumpur, obtaining the title of Grand Champions.