Implications of SiS Catalyst in the South American context Reflections from the local case of Medellin, Colombia SiS Catalyst & EUCU.NET Joint Conference. Vienna, Austria, September 10-12, 2014. Ana Cristina Abad JosĂŠ Ignacio Uribe Universidad EAFIT, Medellin, Colombia.
Context South America
• Region rich in cultural and natural diversity • Big challenge: equity
• Quality on education is becoming a priority on agenda.
Why the sun shines? Workshop, 2013
Improvements and reflections inspired by SiS Catalyst
Issues we improved inspired by SiS Catalyst • New activities completely focused listening to children: Board, WWR, WUF.
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• Enhacement on the recruitment and training program for university students. • Deeper interaction with university professors, not only to do Children’s University activities, but to research about it.
Issues we improved inspired by SiS Catalyst • We put more attention and resources on impact evaluation. • We do more careful and aware practices towards the ethics of working with young people from different backgrounds. • New projects and funders that increase sustainability of our activities.
Workshop: How to take advantage of renewable energies?
Reflections after SiS Catalyst • On Mentoring associates with ACUP (Catalonia), it was important as a “pause” to reflect on why we do what we do: we gained awareness about the problems we (could) address on our local context. • Also we built a list of universal (global) arguments proposed to do children’s university type activities. This can help to sustainability of this kind of programs.
ACUP-EAFIT Proposed arguments for CU 1. Children: Motivated towards education and science. 2. Children: Increase expectations concerning higher education and could awaken scientific vocations. 3. Families: Improvement of family expectations on the education of their children. 4. Children and families: Opportunity to interact in an “open minded� environment with people from diverse backgrounds. 5. Educators: Promote new ways to address teaching and learning processes. 6. Society: public communication and participation on scientific knowledge and practice.
Reflections after SiS Catalyst We recognized valuable issues of EAFIT Children’s University model: • Participants have the possiblility to register up to six years (on three stages). • Many of our workshops are designed to respond to genuine questions of children, working with interdisciplinary teams of professors. • We gather participants from very different backgrounds of our city and around.
David Pelรกez as participant, 2005
David Pelรกez as facilitator, 2014
Vision and challenges
Vision and challenges 1. Learning to do team work beyond borders in our region, in order to disseminate Children’s Universities in Latin America and the Caribbean. 2. Improving sustainability of this kind of programs: we must identify specific needs and opportunities in our local contexts.
Vision and challenges 3. Making deeper connections with academia: to do research and to promote changes in teaching methods. 4. Identifying connections of Children’s University activities with the school curricula: to do team work with formal education.
Vision and challenges 5. Strengthening the dialogue with Colombian policy makers and politicians: beginning to include Children’s University type activities in science and education agenda.
Thanks SiS Catalyst friends! We enjoyed exchanging with you