so. i am pretty much in love with this organization called funcación pies descalzos, an organization that world teach partnered with last year. it is an ngo in colombia that focuses on the education of displaced children. it was actually founded by shakira, when she was just a teenager, in her hometown of barranquilla. that partnership was one of the main reasons that i picked the colombia program, and i remember after reading about it dancing around the house with excitement that i might be able to contribute to such a project.
their mission statement is "the barefoot foundation works to ensure that every colombian child can exercise their right to a quality education. our model targets displaced and vulnerable communities by addressing their unique needs." i´m all about that. that was pretty much the point of my thesis, showing that education is vital for development, especially in societies impacted by conflict. and that the only way to ensure that all children can exercise this right is to put special energy and focus on the unique educational needs of the most vulnerable communities, those most heavily impacted by the war.
i really like their model, too--it takes a very comprehensive approach towards education, especially for displaced populations. not only does it provide quality education, but it also offers psychological support, food and nutrition programs, tutoring, recreational activities, the creation of child friendly spaces, art therapy, anti-child labor projects, and family and community support support through income generating projects. that comprehensive perspective on education is exactly what´s needed by vulnerable populations, in my opinion.
they were one of the schools that participated in the one laptop per child program. by many development standards, that project was none to successful thus far, but i like that they were willing to take a risk and try out that innovative idea. it´s a charter school, so obviously it has more resources than regular public schools. but it´s no pupi endeavor. its focus is to pilot programs working to meet the needs of displaced and vulnerable children, to find out what works, and then try get these successful programs implemented in the public education system at large. quite a grassroots, scalable initiative. it gets a high five in my (albeit perhaps hopelessly idealistic brunonian DS-ey) opinion.
i pretty much wrote an essay of an email begging to be placed there, with all the reasons that i thought i was perfect as a volunteer teacher at that organization. but it turns out that they´re no longer partnering with world teach. i was really sad to hear that, and begged some more, but it didn´t work. i´m still not exactly sure what happened between the two organizations, it´s all a bit shrouded in mystery, but there now seems to be some bad blood between them. maybe it was just a funding issue, or a miscommunication, or a disagreement at the administrative level. but anyway, the partnership is no more.
i scrambled for a long while trying to find the second-best placement to ask for. where i´d be able to do the most with war-affected communities. but that was actually surprisingly hard to figure out. it seems that, well frankly, the whole country was heavily affected by war, and displaced people are everywhere. it does have one of the highest rates of internal displacement in the world, second only to sudan.
i read somewhere that colombia is kind of a unique case because so much of the displacement is into urban slums rather than the more traditional internal refugee camps. that reminds me a bit of kampala--of course most of the displacement from the civil war in uganda was into camps in the north, but when i was researching in some of the slums north of kampala, i found a surprisingly high concentration of displaced people from the north. it was interesting how war-related issues spilled into slum- and urban-poverty issues, in everything from domestic violence and alcoholism to educational issues.
anyway, so that indicated that a city might actually be better than a rural area, even if most of the current rebel activity, and thus the most recently-war-affected-populations, are in remote, rural areas of the mountains and jungle. a rural placement would be more hardcore, more of a challenge, which would be fun, though. but then again, most ngos are based in bogotá. (although a lot of their program operations are in other areas, though it´s really hard to figure out where said operations are concentrated)
i debated it for a long time, but eventually i asked to be placed in bogotá, rather than a rural area. and i got it, which i was very excited about. i hope i made the right choice. someone was giving us a presentation the other day and said something to the effect of "bogotá is one thing, but the rest of colombia is another world," which made me nervous. but thus it goes. i read that fundación pies descalzos has a location in soacha, about 20 min. to the south of bogotá. i´d really like to volunteer there, but i´m wondering whether or not that would be wise considering the mysterious circumstances of the two organizations´ fallout. well, i guess i´ll just ask around, and do some more research, and see what other options are available for volunteering with war-affected communities.
The body of the baby was found in an abandoned on February 6 ground, and hospital records confirm that the mother gave birth on February 5. That is, only he had one day when he left. - https://quivo.co/20469-no-queria-su-bebe-recien-nacida-y-la-dejo-morir.html
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