Planes and airports

My professional life has been filed with hours and hours in airplanes and at airports, but I don't mind. It still amazes me after all these years that we can travel so fast from one place to another. Today from Medellin in Colombia via Panama City to Toronto with COPA Airlines. Goodbye Colombia; hasta luego. Thanks for being such a fascinating country and people.

SENA and Aviation

Today we met with SENA colleagues at their campus in Rio Negro in the area near the airport of the city of Medellin. Great team of professionals with whom we brainstormed about cooperation options. We will start with ESP (English for Special Purposes) training for the aviation program instructors. The campus offers a variety of programs they showed us but we will first focus on their aviation team and then see if we can also link them to aircraft maintenance programs in Ontario.

This campus is also one of the 15 "Techno Parque" sites they have throughout the country with a focus on robots/automation and environmental research (including sustainable energy).

The campus research center has some excellent equipment such as the above displayed water (and other fluids) assessment and testing tools. World class. They also have mechatronic programs.

Two years ago they started some programs in aviation, for the time being with an initial focus on aircraft maintenance but with an interest to start airport operation programs which is a strength area for Seneca. We will focus first on getting more applied English in their programs and down the road can maybe find funding to start other programs in which Seneca can assist.

This was a week of introductions to SENA for our project manager Quinn. For her now to further develop this partnership. Our first visitors from them will come to Toronto in January. It was a good week to be back in Colombia (after four years). On we go....

Colombia rural Sunday

Today a former colleague of FINCA with whom I worked during 2013 invited us to spend the Sunday in his rural "cottage" (called here a "finca" which is like a "hobby farm). It is a lovely place where I also spend a weekend in 2013. Now that Juan Guillermo is retired after 30 years work with SENA he is working on making this place a small eco-tourism place with organic farming. The place is about an hour outside of the city of Medellin.

Juan Guillermo made this outside cooking place which is a super efficient design. The only small fire is behind the small black door and it heats the entire cooking plate. His wife Martha is of course the real cook but Juan Guillermo does the talking and "showmanship" to promote the place. Today we were joined for a nice lunch by a small group of Brazilians with a Colombian travel agent.

The garden area offers all sort of wonderful fruit from mangos to avocados (both seasonal), bananas (see photo below) and mandarins. Juan Guillermo and Quinn are taking some of those from the tree.

These sensationally beautiful flowers and an incredible variety of birds can be found in this natural setting just an hour outside of the bustling city of Medellin. The flowers cut can hold a long time in the house as shown below.

Juan Guillermo is also collecting some old "museum pieces" in his guest lodge. It is a great place to hang out for one or a few days. Very relaxing in a wonderful natural setting with healthy food! Thanks to Martha and Juan Guillermo for having us at their place today.

Smart social inclusion

Today we visited a campus of SENA on the outskirts of the city of Bogota. A few million internally displaced people live here who fled the rural areas of the country during the conflict and violence of the past 50 years (the peace accord with the FARC has been holding well so far the past two years so hopefully we have now seen the end of that civil conflict). Most families in the area live under poor circumstances and their children go to over-populated primary and secondary schools. SENA has started in this area a training center (see also some of my blog posts of 2013 when I was one full year based in Bogota working with SENA). They call it a "technology Park" because next to the training programs they also have applied research activities and a "Technology Academy" for high school aged students. The research is done in virtual reality, biochemistry and automation (use of robots).

In a large "open space" area they have training, applied research and social interaction areas all side by side. I love the concept of learning spaces like this. The Academy works with a selected group of students ages 12 to 16 who come 4 half days to this campus to learn, experiment and do some real life applied research project. The teachers/facilitators of SENA are all younger professionals with a passion to transfer knowledge and inspire these youngsters to think about a career in science. They call their students consistently "talents" instead of students. Below number of the youngsters in action and some short descriptions of projects they work on.

This young man of 14 was working on an artificial hand for handicapped people. He was producing a working prototype thanks to a simple 3D printer. I don't even want to start comparing this kid with me at that age. Well spoken and smart already at his age and coming from a very humble family.

This girl (of 13!!) was working on a nutrition science project to fight heart diseases. Most of us could barely understand the chemistry science she was explaining to us. Unbelievable....

This young fellow of 16 for me could qualify as a professor in the way how clear and confident he explained his biochemistry project. So did his 15 year old colleague who was a bit more shy but who worked on an equally complex applied research project. It was great to see an almost 50-50% balance among these young scientific talents!

This campus has as specialization different transportation maintenance technician training and they have an excellent car maintenance area. The photos here are from the area where they train technicians on the new electrical and hybrid cars.

The classrooms are everywhere in the open spaces and all students have uniforms indicating the program they are in. These are all students from low income families where technical training is probably for most of them the first time (we call them in Canada "first generation learners").

A very different training program found at this campus is culinary skills. We dropped by at the perfect moment when they just had done their assignment for the day. We got to taste it!

In the past years they also had done some aircraft engine maintenance training programs here at this campus. Below two photos in which in the background you can see a bit of the informal housing of this region. On the photo below also a few trucks which are what they call "mobile laboratories" with which SENA instructors go to communities further away from the campus. This was again one of those awesome and inspiring days at SENA. I love the work SENA does and this for me is the smart way of social inclusion where income inequalities is still far to high. Little by little they bring change. Hats off for our colleagues in SENA. What an amazing organization!