The Salesians of Don Bosco came to Colombia in 1891 under the request of President Rafael Núñez. As the President asked directly to the Holy See the foundation of a technical school for boys from poverty in Bogotá, Pope Leon XIII asked to Father Michael Rúa, the first successor of Don Bosco in the government of the Salesian Order, to send their religious educators to the Andean country. The Pope asked also to the Salesians to name the first school with his name. For this reason, the first Salesian work founded in Bogotá is known until now as Colegio León XII (Leon XIII College), in Barrio La Candelaria.

John Bosco was ordered as a priest in 1841 in Turin, the center of the revolutionary movement for the unification of Italy and the most industrialist city of the time in the north of the Italic Peninsula. Turin was attracting thousands of boys and girls from countryside that were mostly engaged in the new factories under very low salaries and terrible social conditions. Many others remain in the streets of the European city, causing insecurity and insanity.

The young priest refused the proposals of many rich and noble families. At the time, the oligarchy was used to have their own familiar priest with a high salary and a beautiful chapel inside a big hacienda. But Bosco came from a fatherless family and poor conditions from the Piedmont countryside. He was impressed by the conditions of children and young people, especially when he visited once the Turin´s prison.

The young priest took the initiative to gather impoverished and migrant youth to give them religious formation and teach them any skill. He was their first teachers upon his own experience as carpenter, shoemaker, builder, tailor and baker. Wandering Turin with a real troop of street children did not attract the sympathy of authorities and families of the middle class who looked at Bosco with suspicion.

The origins of the Salesian Congregation as an educational religious order comes only from this persona experience of Don Bosco with the boys of Turin. He was a writer, a teacher, a full time priest, a visionary, a journalist, a founder and many other titles that come only from his heroic life. He lives in a time of deep persecutions of the Catholic Church in the middle of the nationalistic and rather anti-clerical movements to unified Italy that was possible only in 1870 when they conquered Rome and reduced the political power of Pope Pius IX. This was the last authentic Pope-King and he was a great friend of Don Bosco, who supported the creation of a new religious order dedicated only to the education of the most poor youth of any nation. But while the laws of Count of Cavour closed monasteries, seminaries and convents and exiled the Bishop of Turin, Don Bosco got the sympathy and trust of the civil branch of the society. For this reason, the Salesians of Don Bosco were founded over the edge of a changing time, with a very modern, but at the same time, very loyal identity to the Catholic Church.

The educational movement of Don Bosco moved soon from the then troublesome Italy first to France and Poland and after crossed the Atlantic to the Americas. Argentina is the first non-European country to receive the educators of Don Bosco.

The five continents are familiar with this name, Don Bosco, as he was called for more than four decades by the poor boys of Turin. A man of dreams, he predicted even events far in the future and he saw the Salesian schools and works in countries so far as China and Colombia. Don Bosco recounted in his writings that he saw himself in Cartagena de Indias (see the dream of South America) and two schools´ students came to greet him with joy. Currently, Cartagena has two Salesian schools: San Pedro Claver College and Salesian Schools in Las Bóvedas Plaza.

The Relics

The Casket of Don Bosco contents the relics of the Saint as he reposes in the Mary Help Basilica of Turin. The relics keep the clothes that were used by the saint in life. The representation of his body corresponds to the original proportions and features when he died on 31 January 1888. The idea to bring the relics around the world came from the current Rector Major of the Salesians, the Mexican Father Pascual Chávez, as a gift to all the young people, past pupils and Salesians from the 131 countries where the schools of the saint are located.

The visits of the relics of Don Bosco are called the Don Bosco Peregrination and it started in Rome on 4 June 2009 in the Saint Callisto Catacombs, the places of the first Christian martyrs of Rome and that is under the care of the Salesians since 1930.

Don Bosco arrived to Colombia – his relics – on 8 April. He is brought to the different places where the Salesian schools are located. For the Salesians, Colombia is divided in two Salesian provinces: Bogotá and the east of the Magdalena River and Medellín and the west of the Magdalena River. He will leave Colombia on 24 May.

Surely worst than the long Colombian conflict, it is the reality of its street children in the biggest cities. The Gamín (street boy in Colombian idioms), became almost a traditional character. Even if some people and groups complain of the lack of more definitive projects to end the problem of unprotected children in the Colombian streets, it is possible to find a good list of institutions, private and officials, doing something. The problem stands in the same conflict. Only the growing number of displaced farm families, fleeing from war-zones and taking refuse in the cities, is a definitive source of children on the streets with all its consequences.

As Christmas is time associated with childhood, it is a good time to dedicate our blog to the reality of the poorest children of Colombia: the gamines.

One of those organizations doing something concrete in Medellín is Ciudad Don Bosco (Don Bosco City) a work of the Salesian Congregation. It is a real city for street boys, located in one of the most marginalized barrios of the Aburrá Valley, Robledo Aures (Medellín’s Northwest).

Abused children, street boys, child workers and victims of violence, find in the educative system of Don Bosco a safe place to stay and grow. The process starts in Medellín downtown with the Patio del gamin (Street boy yard), a centenary building of a poor area known as El Hueco (The Hold) – between the Cisneros Metro Station and Calle Colombia. Street children join the programs if they want after they are encourage to do so by the teams of educators that walk the streets looking for them. Several children are sent to the institution by the official Bienestar Familiar.

The second step is in Aures, where there is the main complex of Ciudad Don Bosco, in a real impressive view of Medellín. The institution was founded 40 years ago and have received support from national and international organizations to be able to attend as much children and teenagers from poverty and abandonment as possible. It has also a place in Amagá, a coal mines town at the south of Medellín where children are at risk of labor exploitation and school abandonment. Don Bosco is bringing the children out of the mines to guarantee their studies and formation.

It is a good time to join a good cause in Colombia. Peace comes from justice and concrete actions. Supporting projects like Ciudad Don Bosco is a good way to guarantee that Colombian children will gain a good future. You can find instructions for donations in its official page here.

You can visit the center as well. Send an email or call to 264 21 22. It would be a great place to visit if you are in Medellín.

The solution of the problem of the Farc hostages should be a priority for government and guerrilla alike, said the Church through its main spokesman, Mgr Hector Fabio Henao, director of the social pastoral department.

Henao opened officially the Week for Peace in the Main Cathedral of Colombia in Bogotá and said in his speech that it is an occasion to ask for the return of all hostages to their homes.

The Catholic Church is also concern for the increase of murders in the main cities, the disappearance of young people and the different manifestations of violence in the country. For this reason, it chose this year the slogan ´Life is Unique and Death is Irreversible.´ The Colombian bishop invited the different Catholic communities – the religion of the majorities in the nation, – to put symbols of dialogue in every place of work and study.

This week the Catholic Church will lead in Bogotá journeys of reflection with different institutions to look for proposals of peace and dialogue in Colombia.

Schools and universities, territories of peace

The Church is worry for the increase of violence in schools and centers of education as well.

In an interview to Caracol Radio, Mgr Héctor Fabio Henao said that the proposal of ´schools and universities as territories of peace´ has been thought from years ago, looking that schools become a center of dialogue for the communities around them.

The Church underlined that teachers and students have a very important role in society as agents of peace, tolerance and dialogue. They have by nature manuals of coexistence designed on bases of human right and democracy and those documents are already an excellent principle to empower peace in Colombia.

The Church is worry for the increase of murders in different sectors of the main cities like Bogotá, Medellín and Cali. Young people are particularly involved in this new situations of violence.

Mgr Henao referred to the threat pamphlets of ´social cleansing´ that were distributed in March 2009 in different regions of Colombia. ´Is it necessary to recover the space of dialogue of the young people´ said the bishop.

The schools have other natural elements that must be empowered in society like the associations of parents, ready to create spaces of dialogue.

Schools under threat

Schools and universities have been victims of violence by armed groups in different times. Recently, the new war drug in Medellín have caused a reduction in the attendance of young people to classes. According to IPC, an independent agency of press of Medellín, different schools in the poor quarters of the city have lost the number of attendance due to clashes among gangs. One of the examples is Institución Educativa La Esperanza in Barrio Castilla where in the last three months about 300 students stopped their classes. The school has a total number of 1,200 students. The reason is threats of murder, forced recruitment of boys in the criminal gangs and general fear. The schools of the 6th Commune is the most affected with the problem of violence.

The problem is that the different gangs have their own territories. Students from a different barrio of the school are afraid to come to study. In many cases their schools are located in the territory of a different gang. Even if the young people are not involved in the gangs, the fact that he comes from the other territory, makes him an easy and innocent victim.

On 28th July a boy, Edison Andrés Rodas, was assassinated when he was leaving the school in Institución Educativa Kénnedy. The event made that 18 other students asked the administration to continue their studies from home. They were just afraid to come because they thought they were going to be killed just because they live in the other barrio of the other gang. After the murdered of Rodas, the assistance to the Kennedy school was reduced in 40 percent, said one of the directives.

But also teachers have been victimazed by this kind of violence. According to the reports of ADIDA, the Secretary of Education of Medellín and the Personery, 81 teachers working in poor quarters of the city, have been moved to other institutions because they were threated by violent groups of the barrios.

The Minister of Education of Colombia, Mrs Cecilia María Vélez White, declared that the evaluation to teachers of English of the Colombian schools has proven their lack of preparation:

“De los once mil que nosotros habíamos evaluado más o menos unos cinco mil no sabían hablar inglés, los otros seis mil por lo menos tenían algún rudimento de hablar inglés”.

“Of the eleven thousand we evaluated, some five thousand didn’t know how to speak English. The other six thousand had basic knowledge of how to speak English,“, said the Ministry.

From www.innocentenglish.com/

Programs to improve the knowledge of English in Colombia has been established since 2006 with the intention to prepare students for a future of best opportunities. The Ministry of Education designed strategies like the adoption of international references and the development of language standards. The optimistic works of planning gathered around the creation of a curriculum, evaluation and certifications to schools and universities.

However, the evaluation made this year to teachers of English, shows the failure of any plan. Ministry Vélez White concluded that this is not only in Colombia but in most Latin American countries.

In countries like Colombia where English language has not been appreciated like necessary, any person with an educational diploma can apply to be teacher of English without the need to demonstrate that he or she can speak that language. Most of them just follow lessons on the books, even if they do not have a good idea of pronunciation and zero level of exposure to native English speakers. It is like in United States any person feel enough ready to teach Spanish without knowing Spanish and following the manuals.

New strategies

Ministry Vélez White invited also persons who teach English in institutions of public education, to join a new program to improve the knowledge in that language. June 26 is the deadline for inscriptions in the educational site of the Minister known as “Colombia Aprende.”

However, big problems ask for big solutions. The Colombian society must understand that English as an international language is necessary for a nation in development like Colombia.

English classes should be done in different ways and not like a simple lesson to fill scores. Pronunciation, for example, is considered by experts as the key in learning a second language. Now well, to do so, students should listen only native speakers. Otherwise, a confusing like-English sound will come out from our young Colombians when they would meet real English speaking persons, as Miss Yeris Paolo demonstrated before the cameras.

There are many ways, of course, to get it. One: you can send the teacher and all his/her class to stay a summer in New York or Disneyland. As this proposal must be very much expensive for the Minister of Education and visas would not be surely available, there are other two more practical and cheaper suggestions: using sources like audio, videos, Internet, etc and creating international teacher exchange programs.

Profiting circumstances

Of course there are other many ways to improve the skill of learning English in our schools. In a country that is just four hours by plane from Miami, English should be a common language. Young Colombians from the Caribbean region show more abilities to speak English because the touristic spots of Cartagena de Indias and Santa Marta are frequented by thousand of foreign tourists that come in contact with the population.

Exchange programs with English-speaking countries could be a good solutions: bringing foreign teachers to our country for periods while sending our teachers to those nations, could be an amazing situation that would exchange also cultures, experiences and promote our talents.

It is also curious that the Ministry of Education does not give importance to our English-speaking province. Yes, if you do not know, Colombia has a State that speaks English: the Archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia. San Andresans could be involved as masters of the national program of English… why no?

Funny English signs around the world

Visiting Non-English speaking countries can be funny if you take notice of some signs place to guide foreign visitors. Here some examples from Telf Travel Guide:

• It is forbidden to entertain guests of the opposite sex in your room; please use the lobby for this purpose. (Hotel in China)
• Please leave your values at the front desk (Hotel in Paris)
• Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty. (Zoo in Hungary)
• There will be an exhibition of art by 15,000 Soviet sculptors and painters. These were executed over the past two years. (Announcement in Russia)
• Customers who find our waitresses rude ought to see the manager (Restaurant in Nairobi)
• Ladies are requested not to have children at the bar (Cocktail lounge in Norway)
• Persons are prohibited from picking flowers at any but their own graves (A cemetery somewhere)

“Good morning classe… I am Mister Bonifacio Pérez para servirle y I am your nuevo ticher of Englizz”

One of the things we discussed in classes this year was that nice T-shirt bought in the market by USD 2 with a rabbit head and the unmistakable “Playboy”. Of course, the Cambodian boys, with a little English, think that “Playboy” means “Being smart”. Many of those T-shirts came in big containers with donations from countries as far as USA, Canada or Europe.

When you opened those containers with donations from good-heart people who wanted to support the Cambodian development, you can find curious things: I have seen coats for a Siberian whether with gloves and cotton hats, big bras, sledges, huge old computers with Windows 1986, typewriters as old as 1964, used clothe with wholes, big clothes for people as tall as 1.90 meters height, big shoes with number as 40 to 50…

What is the problem is that poverty is understood since our point of view. Actually poverty is not a matter of having things or not. If you are in France and you have a big mansion with all the technologies and comodities, you could consider that a Cambodian family with a wooden house in the middle of a swamp is the poorest family of this world. Therefore, you decide to equip this family, to help them to overcome such poverty. You send to them the last in technology in television sets, refrigerators, ovens, those beautiful and costly clothes you do not use more… when you sent it, the Cambodian family is very happy to receive it, but after they sell all of those things in the market and get their money, the same they will use to make a great party, drinking beer and telling their friends that they got their own good-hearted foreigners abroad to care for their needs, while they feed their ten cows, growing in their rice field and spending a lot of many in their traditional feasts.

I can see also many foreigners going around with Cambodians suppose-to-be poor guys. Better I would say, I see many Cambodians going around with their foreign that looks after their needs. What happens now here is that everybody is “poor” and everybody asks something, while the real poor are actually covered, far in marginalized territories, or hidden under their own ignorance.

I think it does not happen only in Cambodia, but around the world in poor countries. Feeling sorry about our people is not the best way to overcome our situations. It is proven that in front to foreigners; many just sit down to wait to be fed. Having a good-hearted foreigner as a friend that feels sorry for me is actually a good investment.

I think the best way to help poor countries is education and values formation. The idea is creating educative spaces, donating knowledge, skill and experience, in order to make the Cambodians and any other people around the world, to do by them. Teaching how to catch the fish and not giving the fish. If you give the fish once, he will sit down to wait for you a second time for the second fish. Therefore, you are promoting laziness.

Some groups of foreigners expend time and human resources moving to Cambodia to build houses for the poor. That is a beautiful experience since a point of social services. However, the house is built by foreigners and the Cambodian family goes to live there. The house will not be repaired by the Cambodians, because they will sit down to wait those helpful foreigners to return and do by themselves. I have seen some of those foreign-made-houses and I do not see the Cambodians living there caring enough as it were their own house.

At the other hand, those small seminars, courses, levels, technical schools, formative conferences, directed by foreigners and followed by Cambodians; prove to have a best future.

Stop to send us things! Send us education! It is what we need.

The loan is the first under a new policy that extends average repayment maturities to 18 years from a previous 10 years and three months to 14 years and three months, depending on per capita income.

Under the new repayment schedule, this loan will support the country’s national student loan agency – Instituto Colombiano de Crédito Educativo y Estudios Técnicos en el Exterior (ICETEX) – to finance access to higher education for low-income students.

ICETEX aims to offer financing to 100,000 new students to enroll in higher education for the first time in 2008-10 and will also finance 432,000 loan renewals for students who are already attending programs. ICETEX will award loans based on a blend of need and academic merit, and loans will target students from the lower end of the socioeconomic range.

“In the absence of student loan opportunities open to both public and private institutions, many talented low-income students would be unable to enroll in tertiary education,” said Axel van Trotsenburg, Director of the World Bank for Mexico and Colombia. “The revolving nature of student credit makes the use of this demand-side mechanism more fiscally attractive for the Government and students alike.”

Tertiary academic institutions must register their programs in a national registry system to be eligible to enroll students with ICETEX financing. This is to ensure students are attending schools that meet basic quality standards.

In addition, ICETEX is placing particular attention to students enrolling in post-secondary technical programs, given the importance of the skills that these graduates bring to the job market.

The student loans are tailored to effectively address the needs of low income students by:

• Establishing very low partial interest payments during the in-school period and differentiating payment levels by borrower profile;
• Granting a grace period of one year after graduation before the borrower has to start repaying interest and principal in full;
• Establishing a long (but flexible) repayment period of up to 22 years after graduation;
• Subsidizing interest rates for poor students, leading to interest rates that are well below market levels;
• Allowing for prepayment without penalty.
• Incorporating new flexibility features that may apply in the event of temporary unemployment. These include: the option to defer any payment for up to two semesters and/or the option to renegotiate terms or restructure the loan by establishing a new repayment schedule.

In its national development plan, Colombia sets a target to increase enrollment in higher education by 1.5 million students by 2019. With the help of this project and ICETEX, the country is well on the way to reaching its goal.