The project “Entrepreneurial Seedbed” starts in conjunction with the school calendar, students have received tablets:
On February 24, Origin Learning Fund (OLF) delivered 50 tablets to 100 students, aged 13 to 24, among 3 rural, ethno educational schools in La Guajira, Colombia, officially kicking-off the activities of the project “Entrepreneurial Seedbed”. The event took place at the principal school campus of Nuestra Señora de Fátima, not far from Riohacha, the capital of La Guajira. The other schools involved are Majayura, closed to the second largest city Maicao, and the boarding school Akuaipa, in the municipality of Albania.The project is sponsored by Mesa Màs La Guajira and 9 companies, namely TGI, Enel, ISA, Aes, Cerrejón, Promigas, Celsia, Ecopetrol, and Hocol. It has the core objective to build youth’s entrepreneurial capacities, foster vocational skills, and facilitate access to quality, inclusive education through O-lab app, OLF’s own developed interactive platform adaptable offline and customizable in indigenous tongues. Most of the project’s participants are Wayuu, the indigenous group inhabiting La Guajira and representing 48% of the regional population, Venezuelan, Afro-descendant, and Colombian living in vulnerable communities. The students, after having learned science, math, engineering, art, technology through O-lab app, will present their “life vocational projects” during a final event. The best 10 initiatives will be rewarded with small grants to start their business.
Read more about the event here or watch it here on Canal TeleCaribe!
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Training of trainers in Maicao, a stone’s throw from Venezuela
Origin Learning Fund puts rural teachers, social leaders, and caregivers at the heart of its projects. Their role is key to ensure the sustainability of the activities.
On February 25, the team of OLF trained in Maicao, at the border with Venezuela, 21 women community social leaders in a workshop on how to follow up beneficiaries’ progress through O-lab and how to use the basic functions of the platform. 11 were from FundeProm, a women-led grassroots organization, and 10 from La Pista, an informal quasi-refugee camp among the largest in Latin America, populated by over 13 thousand Colombians living in extreme poverty, Colombians Returnees, Venezuelan refugees, and Wayuu indigenous communities.
Strengthening their digital and psycho-emotional capacities, the social leaders will accompany more than 2000 vulnerable young people until the end of 2024 in a vocational entrepreneurship project that will enable participants to implement a series of community sustainability solutions and develop their own business idea. The best 10 will be rewarded with financial support to help bring the business ideas to life. The project is sponsored by the Spanish private Foundation, Nous Cism.
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Meet Rosemary: From a Wayuu community to working with Origin Learning Fund
“My boyfriend was not accepted by my parents because they thought that him and his family would not give me a good future. They were forcing me to leave him and follow the tradition that teenage girls should marry to ensure a future”
In many rural and vulnerable areas in the world sometimes it is difficult to separate and coexist between tradition and emancipation. Rosemary, an indigenous Wayuu girl from the Colombian La Guajira, told us what her obstacles are and have been and how she relates to a controversial culture that both emphasizes the role of women and relegates it. Rosemary now works with us as a Project Assistant and helps us with the translation of our digital laboratories on O-lab in Wayuu – an opportunity, she confessed, to deepen her own indigenous tongue, often forgotten by the younger generations.
Read more about her story here! Rosemary is part of a project sponsored by the Obama Foundation and the Girls Opportunity Alliance’s campaign, #GetHerThere, to empower 500 girls in La Guajira in STEAM.
Get in touch with us to know more about the project and join forces to break the barriers of learning together!