Child sponsorship update from Ipiales
11/03/2008
Update from Winter 2007
Dear friends:
It is a new year and a new opportunity to share with you different stories and experiences around our families; stories reflected in current reality of our girls, boys and young people framed in happy heart of each one of them; in this way we have done actions addressed to fill our mission creating families for needy girls and boys and helping them to build their own future and to participate in their communities.
The SOS Children’s Ipiales continues growing up; we have welcome 11 new girls, boys and young people in abandonment or orphanhood situation during this year. It means that the number of children remains at the Village however some children returned to their natural families and others began to be independent. There are 42 girls and 70 boys at the Village; among them 9 youngsters are living the youth community process and one girl is living independent with assistance to pay a rented apartment.
Young people live in Pasto and Ipiales they are permanently guided and helped in different fields by the youth home leader “Lorena”. Six girls are studying technical careers; two boys are studying and working although they don’t earn enough money to be completely independent the SOS Children’s Village is helping them. Pablo is the only boy who has began her career in Tulcán Equator, one hour from Ipiales; there he is studying degree in Nursery. Other girl is Diana who finished his technical career in surgery instrumentation and she is working to get money in order to finish her professional career. Fortunately, emphasis is done over development of autonomy and security in children and youngsters and the results are seen when young people gets their goals easier and successfully.
Like every year, the school holiday is time to celebrate sport activities. So, teams were defined according with departments like Cauca, Nariño and Putumayo because these are the regions where most of children come from; it was very nice to make a cultural demonstration like an open day where girl, boys and youngsters, mothers, aunts and pedagogical team wore the typical dress of each department, and presented their dancing and we learnt about history of all of them.
Everybody enjoyed a week of happiness and amusement participating in basketball, mini football, baseball, high and long jump in every category; also we had a contest of song and a “miniteca” ; it was a nice moment to award prizes.
Talking about children protection in our SOS Children’s Village Ipiales, it is also very important to tell you that our organization is doing activities for strengthening families what help to prevent abandonment in communities. That’s the reason the region where the Village is built, also there are two SOS Social Centers: The first one is the Social Center Ipiales which has got linked to the programme 275 poor families who are in vulnerability situation with 355 girl and boys and the second one is the SOS Social Center Tumaco that has attended 204 families in need and 300 children; parents received assistance for caring and protecting their children. The Social Center developed activities about school training, appropriate stimulation, school reinforcement, games, recreation, assistance and guidance for the role of parents; moreover, the Social Centers offers balanced diet which consists in breakfast, lunch and snacks with fruits, vegetables, cereals, proteins, etc
This year the SOS Social Centres have worked with mothers of family organised in groups called self-help teams to solve necessities of the population. This community is characterised by problems of interfamily violence, maltreatment, unemployment and other hard situations which they share each other and are help by the psychologist.
From the community the mothers are trained in the “SENA” about business starting in order they to set up their own business meanwhile they are at home caring their children and also getting money to solve basic necessities of children and so to prevent abandonment.
The SOS Children’s Village Ipiales continues committed with integral attention for improving boys, girls and youngsters environment and quality of life; thanks to your constant and valuable support looking happy hearts through expressive eyes is possible.
¡ Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2008!
Kind regards,
Daniel Gamarra Polo, SOS Children’s Village Ipiales; Lilia Orbez , SOS Social Center Ipiales and Piedad Quiñónez, SOS Social Center Tumaco
Sponsor's update from Bucaramanga
Update from Winter 2007
¡ Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2008!
Dear friends,
Happily we share with you some experiences lived in both of the SOS Children’s Village programmes in Bucaramanga: The SOS Children’s Village and the Social Centre “El Reposo”. We hope this information will be glad for you like a way of gratefulness for your support and also a motivation to keep your solidarity that build new opportunities for girls, boys and young people.
The childhood situation in our country continues being harsh; so, many organisations and some members of the government have promoted a new law to guarantee children and teenagers rights. Finally, the law project passed and it was sanctioned by the President of Colombia Law 1098 2006. The new Code of Infancy and Adolescence guarantees that girls, boys and teenagers have a harmonic development to grow up in a good family and community environment. In this Code human equality and dignity stand out without discrimination, protecting cultural identity, social rooting, and working with families in prevention. In this way, SOS Children’s Village Colombia feels backed from a legal framework to demand a better quality of life for children under our Organization care through both programmes Villages and Social Centres. For that reason, the participation of SOS Children’s Village Colombia in public politics is a purpose for 2008 and it is related with: Campaigns of Facts and Rights in government meetings and participation in social politics committees of each city in order to propose concrete actions to implement the new Law toward all levels.
The SOS Children’s Village Floridablanca Figures
The SOS Children’s Village within its 13 families shelters 116 children -72 girls and 44 boys. In the youth home lives 7 girls, 6 of them are legal of age; a girl 17 years old and a young adult boy is 20 years old are living by their own the process to the adult life with the guidance of their SOS mother and a member of the pedagogical team at the Village. During this year we welcomed 10 girls and boys who could not stay with their biological families for some reason; 8 children left the Village, most of them returned to their biological families, like a positive way to be reintegrated in their natural environment; and a young adult girl was transferred to the youth home. The 57% (71) of the boys and girls are between 11 and 15 years old; there are just three children younger than 6 years old in pre-school. Boys, girls and young people continues his academic process: There are 62 children studying secondary and 8 boys and girls are studying technical and professional careers.
The youth toward autonomy and independence
In Floridablanca the youth committee consists by the pedagogical assistant, the youth leader and three SOS mothers or aunts stimulate and promote with young people and for them the importance of working. For that reason, it was applied a questionnaire for 40 teenagers older than 14 years old with the purpose to make a characterization of them like a vocational guidance. Later, they have been participating in integration activities and different courses referring with their interests to study.
Among this group there are 12 children who are older than the others and they develop a harder work it means more frequent meetings and actions where they learn about job competences, social and communicative skills. We work together with them in values to be leaders and part of a team. They have enjoyed educational outings to companies, factories or experiential activities like a walking where they must arrive to a finish for what they had to appoint a leader to mange resources water and food- and to establish rules, improve difficulties and avoid conflicts the purpose of the activity was to strengthen solidarity, cooperation and positive leadership.
Two leaders came up from this activity; it was not easy at the beginning for them to accept and respect responsibilities of the other, but they faced up to the conflict and solved difficulties to get the goal. Later, it was done other activity where the group without the leaders, got an excellent coordination to carry out the homework generating competences among them to work in a team.
Working together with young people has become a priority that has made co-workers, mothers and young people be aware of a training and educational process for independence. Less by less, young people have identified strengthens and weaknesses which were attacked with help of their mothers. One of the strategies used to get social skills with good results was to appoint the youngest youth to organise and carry out community activities like the celebration of the SOS Children’s Village anniversary! -It was done with responsibility; they were congratulated by the community- So, as it was a success! They will be responsible of the Nativity Novena , celebration done on Christmas time.
The young people continue getting technical and academic objectives in what they have chosen. The main goal is to carry out the work practice during their vacations on December.
Training and Co-worker development
In August, co-workers from the National Office were developing a process of re-induction in Floridablanca; touching and reflecting workshops were done in order to strengthen the mission, vision, values and organisational principles for children protection and its relation with personal purposes. Happiness, enthusiasm and commitment were the characteristics of the 29 co-workers participating during two days in different activities
The results were integration among us and awareness about our role in the Organization what made us to make personal and community commitments to a better present for girl, boys and young people.
In this way, the director of the village and pedagogical team apply monitoring processes regularly to help mothers and aunts to consolidate families. Moreover, the pedagogical team organised training workshops monthly in different topics like “Open your mind to change”, “The infancy law”, “Emotional development”, “Self-control of stress” and “Rights of girls and boys”.
Amusement and something more
School holidays in the middle of the year were enjoyable for girls, boys and young people at the Village because they practiced sport and other activities; the purpose of this sport meeting was to highlight values like tolerance, respectful, honesty and gratitude. So, these were the four teams and all members were committed to promote and to practice them within family. Girls, boys and youngsters enjoyed playing football, basketball, volleyball, relay race, and observation race and aerobics marathon.
September was a great month for Friendship and Love
It is a very sweet month when we played a game called “secret family” ; previous weeks to the celebration every family was sweeten like top secret with fruits, candies, chocolates, etc and a souvenir given on September the 22nd; on that day each family opened the gift made by each family during a great celebration. The families made their own gifts like cards, decorated ceramics and prepared delicious cakes and pies.
During the year, six families organised with enthusiasm, creativity and affection the celebration of the 15th years old for 10 girls. Seven parties when the young ladies wore elegant dresses, danced waltz and were together with their best friends and some classmates and relatives in a hall with balloons, flowers and many lights like in a disco were done.
The Social Center is engaged with community development
Thirty minutes far from the SOS Children’s Village Floridablanca by car is the Social Center “El Reposo”, in one of the most popular and marginal neighbourhood of the zone, where there are vulnerable families and the children’s rights are not respected
boys, girls are always in risk situation, especially in relation with maltreatment, intra-family violence, and all kind of abuses, main cause of the children abandonment. This Social Center functions there since twenty months ago in a modest, warm and plenty of hopeful environments. 150 girls, boys and young people arrived there daily, reflecting on their smiles, happiness to share a new day with teachers, friends, playing and learning new things. The greatest number of children is on the first infancy there are 90 little girls and boys between two and six years old- distributed in groups of 15, protected by a mother, who is in charge of taking care of them, playing with them and also teaching interesting things; their schedule is from 8 in the morning till four in the afternoon. The boys and girls come from families which are devoid of good economical and social conditions and they show nutritional deficiencies. So that, the Social Center Programme also offers integral attention, including nutritional intervention to satisfy individual needs.
The main aspects to pay attention are the components Women, Family and Community. The programme consists of attention aspects like the components Women, Family and Community. Nowadays:
Thirty women, mothers of the participant children are registered into a programme of personal development; they attend experiential workshops, urban agriculture and work development that permit them autonomy and a better performance in their role like mother who recognise and exercise their daughters and sons rights.
105 families develop an improvement plan for their lives, enable them to protect and care for their children.
Community working with group-base, natural organisation and management committee which become protector of the girls, boys and young people’ rights.
The Community recognises the services offered by the Social Center; boys and girls shows good changes in their development processes well nourished, greater social and cognitive skills- and the 105 families have acquired commitments projected toward community in order to protect their sons and daughters and they have become promoter and defender of girls, boys and young adults rights.
A “macramé” workshop. In the Social Center, knot to knot different skills are developed
Some months later after have attended courses of “filigrana” and origami, girls and boys older than 7 years old expressed their wishes to make their own wrist bands and belts, so, for the happiness of them the course of macramé started on July the 16th. To be successful in this activity they needed to be patient, tolerant and to accept mistakes to correct them, learn from them and work for quality. Nowadays they have done nice accessories , not only for their own, but also for selling.
There are many experiences referring with this topic, but the highlight one is referring with one of the boys who has hearing difficulties and handedness, beside to be hyper-active; it was so difficult for him to learn to distinguish the right from the left hand ¿How to put a yarn on right or left hand? Finally, he got internalise the concept of right and left, he began to progress increasing class time and two month later he began to control his actions and developed skills to make nice products in macramé.
All of these examples of girls and boys have motivated their mothers to start a new course for adults though the lack of money.
Thank you to your generosity and support, the SOS Children’s Village programme of family strengthening and family protection, keep working hardly for guaranteeing girls, boys and youth rights and their quality of life.
“The opportunity of giving is the best way to help”
Kind regards,
Guillermo Vargas Martha Patricia Torres
(Village Director) (Social Center Director)
Relevant Countries: Colombia.