Map of the Bolivar province

Just got this really good map of the province where the focus of our "Education for Employment" program will be. In Colombia a province is called "Departamento", and Departamento de Bolivar stretches from the Atlantic Ocean (where its capital Cartagena is located) to quite a way to the south. We focus our EFE program activities with SENA in the smaller pink area of the municipality of Barranca de Loba and the green area in the south of the municipality of Santa Rosa del Sur. To get to Barranco de Loba you have to drive seven hours, and from there it is about six hours in the river boat to Santa Rosa del Sur. Gives you an idea of the distances...

The red area is the Bolivar province and it gives you an idea of its size compared to the total size of Colombia. Bogota is located just south of the pink area (Santander province) under Bolivar.

Cartagena is the yellow area on the Atlantic coast, and I already dedicated several posts on this wonderful city. SENA Bolivar has three main campuses in Cartagena, and one of them is the center for Agri-business & Mining with whom we concentrate the EFE program work. This center offers programs in the entire province up to in the south of Santa Rosa del Sur. You can imagine that this is logistically not an easy thing to organize. Part of the training delivery is "distance", but they also offer a fair bit of in-person training. In some cities (like Mompox, see earlier post), SENA has a dedicated building, but in most smaller towns they make use of local high schools and other locations

In this list you see part of the 45 municipalities in the Bolivar province, and the two pilot communities we cover with our EFE program are Barranco de Loba (35) and Santa Rosa del Sur (44)

Here you see the area where Barranco de Loba (35) is located, a region in the Magdalena river delta
 

 And here you see the Santa Rosa del Sur (44) region. This southern part of the Bolivar province borders with Cesar, Santander (see my post on the city of Barrancabermeja) and Antiqouia, where we have also a few pilot communities for our EFE program in Puerto Berrio, Remedios and Segovia (see also previous posts of my visist there in March).

Hope this helps you to get a bit better idea of where we concentrate our EFE program activities. During the past few decades this southern region of Bolivar has been seriously impacted by the conflict between the government and guerilla groups such as the FARC and ELN. Now that peace negotiations seem to go well, this part of the country - which was so isolated - might turn a page and become more part of the formal economy of the country. That is why SENA wants to increase its training program offering in these communities. Since the main economic activities are gold mining and small scale agriculture, these sectors will have the focus of our EFE program.

We have done the community stakeholder sessions in February, March and April, and are now making a "gap analysis" of what programs SENA has ready to start delivering as of July, which programs need some "upgrading" (possibly together with the Canadian colleges) and which programs need to ne newly developed (with the Canadian colleges). This work will result in "terms of reference" packages for five Canadian colleges, and the selection process for these five colleges will take place during the second half of 2013, so that they can start their three years of cooperation with SENA in early 2014. On we go... these processes take time, because SENA is a huge organization offering programs to already 7 million Colombians. And on the Canadian side we have to step by step approve with ACCC and with the funding agency CIDA.... accountability & transparency...