Qualification of Community Welfare Homes - Vaupés

Qualification of early childhood care in 38 community homes in the department of Vaupés.

During 2017 and 2018, in alliance with Fundación Éxito, we executed a series of projects aimed at implementing a knowledge management and social mobilization strategy to improve the quality and relevance of actions aimed at promoting the comprehensive development of children in the department of Vaupés. This process concluded satisfactorily in March 2019.

Given their characteristics as a shelter for children under five years of age, the 38 Community Homes of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF) in the department became the ideal scenario to diagnose the issue of early childhood care in mostly indigenous populations. Based on this diagnosis, a reformulation of the care schemes for children as subjects of rights was proposed, in a process that brought together local actors around reflections and proposals for improvement actions aimed at the adequacy of the service. This was done through the implementation of a formative and collaborative research aimed at the participatory construction of the conceptual and operational bases of fields that interrelate the components of comprehensive care, namely:

1. The patterns of early childhood care and nurturing.

   
   

2. Traditional and intercultural diets that favor the development and growth of children.

   
   

3. Pedagogical work and educational materials in indigenous languages.

So, this is what we did:

• Formative and collaborative research as a pillar of the qualification process

• Design of intercultural methodologies and strategies for the qualification of educational agents in charge of community homes

• Community educational projects

• Ethnographies of the classroom

• Accompaniment of educational agents

• Exercises of community co-responsibility for early childhood care

• We went deeper into intercultural child-rearing and care guidelines and practices

• We took anthropometric measurements (weight and height) of all the children in the 38 communities

• We went deeper into the topic of proper and intercultural nutrition for early childhood and how the food is fed in the ICBF's community homes. We deepened the pedagogical work of the community homes

• We elaborated material in native languages for early education

• We analyzed together with the communities the care and protection networks for early childhood

• We elaborated an intercultural proposal of social organization for care and early education