Fundación Secretos para contar
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Mission Statement
Reading and education for the colombian countryside
About This Cause
Through different educational and training initiatives aimed at stimulating education, our Foundation tries to provide as much opportunity as possible for Colombian families living in out of the way parts of the country, to communicate with their local communities as well as with the world at large, while encouraging a greater sense of self-worth so that they value their relationship with the nature and countryside, as well as to improve their quality of life. Children’s reading skills and test scores are generally low in Antioquia limiting chances to access education and opportunities. This is seen especially critical in rural areas where access to public services, health and education is limited, and where parent’s educational levels are low. With the aim of addressing this reality, over the last 18 years Secrets to tell Foundation has been developing reading material that has been contextualized to local needs and rural lifestyles and interests, and, through innovative methods, has sought to encourage the use of these books and texts by family members at home and ensure the pedagogical use of texts in classrooms. It is the only organization to have reached 100% of the most remote areas of the state of Antioquia despite geographical difficulties, impacting over 10.000 teachers and 738.000 families. This project seeks to build on this successful rural reading program by incorporating new elements and evaluating different levels of their potential impact. OBJECTIVES • Promote reading habits amongst the Colombian rural communities to help improve the quality of their lives. • Dignify the role of the Colombian rural people and help them to enhance the image they have of themselves, underlining the importance of their work and knowledge of the country as a whole from the economic, cultural, social and ecological standpoints. • Provide means of entertainment and hours of fun for members of the family as well as the rural communities to which they belong, and in so doing, build up ties and set in motion a means of networking to ensure greater development. • Make up for the lack of educational material in the Colombian countryside. • Design strategies that help rural families to stay in their own respective towns and villages. • Help improve the Colombian countryside as well as preserving the environment. • Extend broader knowledge of the reality of the Colombian countryside so as to create a network of assistance and solidarity and encourage greater reflection with regard to the issues at stake. The foundation designs, edits and produces book collections which are fun, well-illustrated, and address the learning needs and interests of rural families, something that had never been developed in Colombia. Each trilogy of “family collections” consists of a book on literature exalting the joy of reading, a book on practices useful for rural families in their daily lives and about science or general knowledge. One of the key elements in the foundations success has been its training and distribution method. First, a rural teacher’s workshop allows them to become familiar with the books, and then a playful and pedagogical workshop is carried out with families in each village to deliver the books and show their use in a family environment, enabling parents to help develop their children’s interest in reading and key skills. Finally, teachers are trained to use the books in the classroom through guides and exercises, creating a link between classroom and home learning and resources. The foundation has developed a management and field team of 20 highly trained professionals that develop the workshops in every village. This capacity has enabled the foundation to continually implement their programs in several municipalities at time, whilst developing new reading and pedagogical materials through interdisciplinary expert working groups. Our board of directors is formed by highly renamed executives who have worked in the field of education. This project seeks to further develop the foundation’s process by integrating access to public services, such as electricity, in order to improve reading competencies and scores and provide more resources for family reading environments, thereby improving their quality of life. OUR PROJECTS: Core project: the family collection. Secrets, the countryside in words The family collection is an educational project that consists of editing, producing and personally delivering a collection of books to families in rural areas. These books have been written using accessible, easy-to-understand language based on its target audience and every two years we are renewing its content so as to preserve the interest factor on the part of our target audience. Each trilogy consists of a book on literature exalting the joy of reading, a book on practices useful for rural families in going about their daily lives and another book about science or general knowledge. Reading supplements: glasses and dictionaries As part of the activities carried out at our installation workshops, we carefully and responsibly provide glasses with a lens power of +1.50 or +2.00 diopters to adults over the age of 40, after undergoing an eye test confirming that they need reading glasses at home. We also provide our rural families with a dictionary so they can better understand the meaning of the new words they come across. Both the glasses as well as the dictionary are aimed at improving reading habits amongst our target audience. Story-telling competition The Secrets to Tell Foundation stages story-telling competitions so as to encourage reading and writing activities amongst teachers and schoolchildren in classrooms across the country. This project is based on the fact that reading and writing are two mutually inclusive skills in the academic and social education of a community. Other publications In some parts of Antioquia we are also distributing a kit consisting of two books, a board game and a series of workshops where through game-orientated activities we are getting across our message of peace and our strong condemnation of war. We also provide children with technical information regarding landmines and unexploded ammunition in all those areas affected by this scourge. Babies and toddlers In association with the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) we are providing community “mothers” in charge of community daycare facilities in various parts of the country with our book “The First Years” The purpose of this program is for these community mothers to track the development of the children in their care as well as the needs of infants at each specific stage, so as to ensure that they have a happy infancy and grow up to be fine, upstanding adults. Radio program: books on the air waves Stimulating the imagination and furthering the knowledge of our rural audience We are developing radio programs with content that is specially designed for our rural families and related to the topics addressed in our collections. As with our books, our radio programs are aimed at furthering the knowledge of our rural families regardless of their location. These programs are broadcast by local radio stations as well as on our website. Teacher-training program: Teachers for life! Ensuring that our teachers are trained in educating integral human beings Workshop guides We deliver our books working side by side with school teachers, who act as “bridges” for us to reach out to families living in the more remote areas. As part of this joint initiative, the Secrets to Tell Foundation has published four workshop guides (10.000 copies each), that is to say one for each trilogy of books we have published. These have been provided to schoolteachers as part of specially-designed workshops. Both the guides as well as the workshops are based on a comprehensive focus on education with schoolteachers expanding on the topics covered by our books and taking maximum advantage of this material during classroom hours. Secrets for teaching: a portal for rural schoolteachers In Secrets for Teaching, the teacher portal found on this website, we publish material specially tailored for teachers on a permanent basis. Here, teachers can access the contents of the books we provide, classified for easy reference and presented in a fun and entertaining way, along with a teaching library with workshop flashcards that can be used with the schoolchildren. New School In order to accompany rural teachers and students with strategies to stimulate communication skills in preschool and elementary rural schools with low academic achievement in the area of language, the Government of Antioquia, through the Ministry of Education, made a partnership agreement with the Secrets to Tell Foundation to strengthen the New School methodology. This work is ahead in 30 municipalities of Antioquia, with an accompanying over 400 Rural Education Centers, seeking to promote, through play and art, literacy processes and bases of learning in primary school. Business enterprise program: local talents Providing support to further the economic capacity of different rural communities by encouraging them to build a future in the place of their roots and in so doing reduce urban migration levels in Colombia Tourism in La Mojana: Given the amount of destruction produced by heavy rainfall, as a result of La Niña weather phenomenon in 2010, the Secrets to Tell Foundation, with the support of Bancolombia, embarked on two projects in the regions of La Mojana and Gran Isla de Mompox (in the Departments of Bolívar and Magdalena). The first consisted of providing our latest trilogy of books to 10.000 rural families in these underprivileged areas. The second, benefiting a total of 500 families in 13 communities, was aimed at taking full advantage of the human talent within these regions by setting up various community and tourist initiatives.