2023 was the year in which we were able to build an alliance in Colombia with Conviventia, ACSI, Unisymes (a Christian university in Bogota) and OBED (the association of Christian schools in Colombia). A large part of the year was spent getting the alliance up and running, deciding on the best strategy for Education system change in the country and adapting the 4-year program of Guatemala to the context of Colombia.
New manual
In the end, we decided to take year 1 and 2 of the Guatemala program and merge this into one year and an adjusted manual was developed for this. A new manual was edited and printed at the end of October for our program which is called “Cre-siendo Juntos”. It means growing and being together. We hope to see community of teachers grow and flourish in Colombia too!
Pilot group of over 550 teachers
In September, we made significant efforts into contacting schools and teachers and were able to launch the program with a pilot group of over 550 teachers which have started or will start in the coming weeks. These are mostly teachers from private Christian schools, spread out all over Colombia as well as a few public schools. Most of the schools are reaching marginalized communities in the country, but we also have a few higher quality schools in the program to measure the impact the program might have at these schools.
Hopefully, this will allow us to market the program further in the coming years! All have been part of a baseline study so we will be able to track growth and improvement in the process. We look forward to seeing how the program continues to develop and the goal in 2024 is to add another 1,000 teachers as we slowly expand the program.