Taller de Paz works with children of internally displaced families ages 9 - 16, living in the neighborhood of Suba, Bogotá, with the goal of fostering a next generation of leaders within the community. The program's curriculum is designed to equip its participants with skills necessary to be active participants in their community by focusing on self expression, communal responsibility, and peaceful resolutions to conflict. This project unites the experience of children from Suba with that of University students from the US and Bogota in an interactive and reciprocal classroom environment of five students to every workshop facilitator. Taller de Paz is also committed to raising awareness of the displacement situation, in Colombia and the US, through exhibiting it's students' work.
Taller de Paz is committed to the empowerment of displaced youth in Colombia through collaborative and cooperative workshops which recognize the difficulties and barriers that the children face on a daily basis as well as promote active-participation in their communities as integral agents for social change. We are also dedicated to the involvement and engagement of the parents with the project so that our programs are both comprehensive and responsive to the real needs of the participants and their families and in order to generate the project's goals and direction from within.
1. Access, Education, & Action
2. Encourage leadership
3. Deep understanding of the situation of the participants
4. Create a safe-space to allow for free, frank, and productive discussion
5. Education through a model of empowerment
1. Uncover and explore the various dynamics of interaction that interweave in the community and identify the problems and solutions thereof.
2. Explore and identify the tools that the participants have in order to bring about change.
3. Identify the rights that the participants have in various contexts such as home, community, school, and society.
4. Explore the different meanings of leadership and how it is manifested within the community.
The main goal this summer will be to place ourselves within the community and commit ourselves to a current problem which is strongly affecting the neighborhood. By addressing a problem with which the participants can identify, we hope to further strengthen the skills developed in the workshops. The tools offered by the workshops will be relevant to the issue at hand and will offer methods of raising awareness and achieve true social change.