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!