Las Golondrinas Foundation - Colombia

The Basic School “Camino de Paz” is the Golondrinas Foundation’s educational institution. The school provides classes for 2,400 children. Its educational programme is based on three proposals: regular, formal education; early childhood; and basic processes.

The organisation also has its own Cultural Training Centre in which children can spend their free time wisely. The centre hosts training workshops, cultural activities, festive/fun, and recreational activities. Internet service is available as well as bibliographic and audiovisual material; there is a story hour, access to didactic toys, reading, and hands-on skills workshops, as well as other activities.

In the area of health care, communities and families have access to preventative and educational workshops. They also can receive counselling and advice as well as trainings for families on parental responsibilities, planning your life project, and taking responsibility for your role as a parent.

Childhood, education, health.

The Foundation promotes healthcare prevention and promotion programmes for communities for which it receives support from the Antioquia University for providing dental services to children. The Outpatient Centres for Nutritional Support (Centro Ambulatorio de Atencion y Apoyo Nutricional - CAAAN) are located in Caicedo and Llanaditas neighbourhoods. They offer health care and food for children between 6 and 24 months who are at risk of nutritional deficiencies. The foundation has other programmes such as the Godparent Plan (Plan Padrino) through which 1,330 children and 80 senior citizens benefit daily by attending community cafeterias.

Through the job training and human development programme, the foundation seeks to strengthen and development the skills and labour worthiness of young people, single women head of households, and the community in general in the arts or trades that migh foster better living conditions in the community.

Together with the Spanish Bocalán Foundation, Las Golondrinas Foundation promotes an assisted animal therapy centre that uses animals as a tool for overcoming trauma and the aftershock of social problems and, physical and/or mental disabilities. Together they seek to help the patient recover and recuperate. The Centre’s objective is to offer services to private citizens with the purpose of subsidising low-income children as well as subsidise education and nutrition services for the 2,400 girls, boys, and adolescents who go to school at the foundation’s Colegio Básico (Basic School) “Camino de Paz.”