Educational model for working children

In 2005, COTA secured a five-year grant from the Big Lottery Fund to develop and pilot a flexible educational model for working children in Cali with our partner the Asociación Cristiana de Jóvenes (ACJ - the YMCA in Colombia). The project is having ever greater success in helping hundreds of children move away from child labour and into formal education. It is also using this direct experience of working with children and their families to develop and promote an educational model for working children which will have the potential for replication within Colombia, through the YMCA network, and beyond.  The project has developed a successful methodology for working with these vulnerable children, helping them "learn to learn" and ensuring that they enter and remain in formal education once they are ready to take that step.

There are three crucial stages to ACJ's approach:

1. They gain the trust of child workers in their homes and places of work, inspiring them with the idea of education through play and recreation.  
2. They help the children "learn to learn", which is done through classes at ACJ's Children's Centre.  These ‘lessons' give children the skills they will need to cope with a classroom environment (e.g. concentration, sharing, listening, thinking about the future and building confidence). 
3. The final step is to help the children into formal education, enabling them to gain the education and qualifications they need to break the cycle of poverty.  ACJ continues to provide flexible academic support to these children.

ACJ has been enormously effective in building relationships with government, educational institutions and the voluntary sector in preparation for the launch of the model in 2010. It is hoped this will lead to widespread use of ACJ's model by other educational institutions.

A manual on ACJ's methodology was presented to the Ministry of Education in Bogotá in 2009 which led to the project's official recognition as a non-formal education provider.  The Ministry has also expressed interest in adopting the ACJ model as an accredited alternative to mainstream education for excluded children between the ages of 7-12.

The crucial next stage of this project is to scale up this innovative model so that it is reaching many more children. The plan is to share the approach with teachers and schools in the formal education sector so that teachers can provide more effective support to vulnerable children once they have made the transition into school system, and help prevent children at risk from dropping out of school.  In this way, ACJ's learning will start to be integrated into the Colombian school system. 

COTA's Big Lottery Project comes to a Triumphant End - read our Blog (July 2011)