Venezuela IED School, Bogotá

It started in 2018.

To generate in the educational community processes of critical reflection and historical responsibility in the face of migration and forced displacement at a local and global level, promoting inclusive actions in school daily life, through a comprehensive pedagogical process in the areas of Social Sciences, Spanish and the Arts, in alliance with the inclusion support team.

According to the working document Chamitos: Cartographies of a journey and construction of new links (2020), this program is a pedagogical research proposal with an active participatory character (IAP), which seeks to involve teachers from different areas, managers, support teachers and other members of the educational community, interested in contributing to the construction of scenarios and inclusion practices for migrant and displaced children and adolescents.

Migrant and displaced students are the main actors in this pedagogical process, since they are the ones who reconstruct their travel stories and their experiences in the new inhabited places, recounting their fears, pains, joys, and dreams.

The entire educational community is part of the project, since it seeks to permeate different educational processes, involving all students and teachers in the exercise of thinking about real and affective inclusion in school. In this way, it is not focused particularly on those who have lived experiences of displacement or migration, but contemplates the entire school community.

The project seeks to generate links between students on the move and the host community and to connect these experiences with the local and global historical context through academic content. In this way, students put into practice tools of Geography (based on radical geography), Art (cartographies), History (through letters to migrant students from Algeria), and Social Sciences (through the study of migrations and social contexts in the world). The integration of academic content with personal experiences allows students to process their experiences and connect with their host community, promoting their general well-being.

Likewise, the project includes students' families, in order to address negative stereotypes that may exist in households with respect to migration or other particular groups.

The main activities of the project follow four progressive phases that integrate the academic components with a teaching staff trained to address diversity from different angles, based on a solid background on psycho-pedagogical literature, participatory methodologies, and the history of multiculturalism and interculturalism (which addresses geography, the history of migrations, and art).

The four phases are as follows:

Phase 1: Exploration - “Remembering and Recognizing Context

I work in groups of children and adolescents in situations of displacement and Colombian and Venezuelan migrants, based on the elaboration of individual stories and narratives under the advise of the Spanish department (Courses 6 to 11). Timelines developed by some students are taken into account as first inputs in the construction of narratives. In turn, the importance of remembering by writing is highlighted.

The Social Sciences area provides a context on forced displacement and migration, addressing key concepts related to these two phenomena.

Phase 2: Deepening - “Mapping My Journey and Understanding the of Others”

From the Social Sciences area, a critical analysis is carried out with all students on the main prejudices against forced displacement and migration. A theoretical assignment is done on “borders” and on the history of the conflict and migration to Venezuela in previous decades; in addition, a comparison is made with the conflict in Syria, Palestine, and Western Sahara. As a result of this process, students write letters to other migrant children and adolescents or victims of forced displacement.

The Spanish department analyze students' autobiographical accounts, paying attention to the travel narrative, and allowing them to identify in their writing what adjustments are required in order to achieve their goals of expression and communication.

The Arts department addresses the exercise of emotional cartography, which allows to understand visual elements for the construction of metaphors from the image and the management of the image as a story.

Phase 3: Production - “Building my own narratives”

The Arts department then promotes the creation of maps to accompany the autobiographical stories prepared by students. This map, based on emotional cartography, contains symbols, metaphors, visual representations through form, color, texture. It constitutes a visual account of their life stories of forced displacement and migration, which in turn reflect the dreams, desires, and life projects that accompany the students.

These illustrations contain achieved understandings and new questions raised in the face of mobility and the different social and cultural phenomena that occur around this reality. In turn, it sought foe them to be messages that invite the educational community to take daily actions of inclusion, solidarity, and affection with peers or neighbors who have experienced this situation of forced displacement or migration.

Phase 4: Socialization - “Weaving new bonds”

Autobiographical stories, letters to child and young migrants, emotional cartographies, illustrations, and other records of the experience are shared through an exhibition open to the entire educational community. It promotes conversation and the construction of a position towards inclusion in a broad sense, a sense that takes the populations that have migrated or moved to other territories and their insertion into the school context into account.

Several institutional events (radio programs, performances, course assemblies) continue to promote the construction of inclusive and welcoming links with the population in situations of forced displacement and migration in the school.

The target population is all students enrolled in the thirteen grades of the school (high school and primary/preschool), from kindergarten to eleven. Currently, according to key informants, the school has about 390 students.

This program covers students from a public school located in the town of Mártires, in Bogotá, an area that has historically received internal and foreign migration, in addition to other vulnerable groups. The school is located in the Santa Fe neighborhood, an area characterized by sex work and drug micro-trafficking. However, the faculty and management of the school have focused on the historical places that remain in this town, such as the Central Cemetery, the Paloquemado market, the Third Millennium Park, among others.

Urban, Mártires town

Sporadically, support has been received from some institutions. UNHCR collaborated with resources for a concert for students, while the District Education Secretariat has made donations for project activities (e.g., visits to historical sites).

The program is carried out under the school's regulations and under the Ministry of Education, which allows schools to have autonomy in the contents they teach, as long as they comply with the basic curriculum by grade. Decree No. 1860 of 1994, which regulates Law No. 115 of 1994, which is the General Education Law of Colombia, grants schools autonomy to administer their curriculum and determine the contents of the subjects in compliance with general guidelines that standardize learning.

The Chamitos program has a gender component and incorporates intersectionality as a framework for understanding different identities and promoting respect for diversity. Its objectives propose that gender equity must governs activities. This is integrated into the workshops by investigating how different identities affect people's experiences. Likewise, the theoretical framework of the project takes up the gender perspective to highlight the importance of this factor in the experiences of the students.

The project is based on a baseline carried out with the school population to identify the most outstanding sociodemographic characteristics of the context. To date, however, there have been no systematic evaluations of the program because it is still under development and the pandemic has disrupted activities.

For the characterization that was used as a baseline, a semi-structured interview was formulated with 52 closed and open questions, which collects quantitative and qualitative data of 136 migrant students or their caretakers, addressing the personal situation, the family and socioeconomic context, emotional aspects, and the academic context. The research instrument was applied to 100% of the migrant population enrolled for the year 2019, which corresponded to 136 students. The instrument was divided into four aspects:

• Demographic aspects: basic data of the student, related to their age, origin, composition of the family or host nucleus, health conditions, and feeding and working conditions.
• Socio-economic context: living conditions of the family, housing locality, income and profession of the family group, reasons for migration, access to technologies, and tools for academic work.
• Emotional aspects: possible psychological abuse, desires, feelings, expectations, and difficulties since their arrival in Colombia.
• Academic context: open questions that seek to know the academic performance of the students, the areas that are more and less difficult for them, and their assessment of positive and negative aspects of the school.

The school funds come from the district, from the participation fund, and from the district fund that allocates each student a fixed amount of money per year. The Chamitos project is funded from private donors interested in supporting the program. Thus, funds have varied over time and are not stable due to the sporadic nature of donations.

Key informant interview conducted on March 2, 2021:

• Rector of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela School of Bogotá.
• Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela School (IED) (2020). Chamitos: cartographies of a journey and construction of new links. In-school pedagogical project to promote the inclusion of child and young migrants or those in situations of forced displacement. Working paper.

More information about the school can be found at https://www.redacademica.edu.co/colegios/colegio-rep-blica-bolivariana-de-venezuela-ied

The Chamitos program is innovative because of its rigorous theoretical approach, which integrates different areas of knowledge, and because it starts from the explicit will of an educational staff to make the diversity of its student a strength in the learning process. Assuming migration as a meeting point that can be integrated into the academic, pedagogical, and empirical is a great strength of this educational staff. Being located in a high impact area, Chamitos integrates and employs the context around it to empower students through critical reflection and teaching of regulated content.

The Venezuela IED School has seized the autonomy granted by the Ministry of Education in the development of content to create learning opportunities for students. Instead of rejecting the multiculturalism and plurality of its environment, as often happens in the rest of its high-impact town, Chamitos has transformed the situation into a mechanism for learning and reflecting on more complex historical realities that cross the student population.

This project is an example of a good practice generated from public education that does not need many resources to function, as it depends on a teacher and management will that recognizes diversity as a strength. Chamitos is an example of acceptance and integration that, from the voices of the students themselves, has had a positive impact on their education, health, and social well-being

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Good practices of educational inclusion of migrants

Author: UNESCO IIEP Buenos Aires, Oficina para América Latina; Education Cannot Wait; United Nations Children's Fund.

Year of publication: 2021.