Empowering Women Through Football in Colombia

Dear friends at GlobalGiving, 

From the entire team at Children Change Colombia, we would like to thank you for your crucial support in raising global awareness about our organisation and our projects. Our core mission is to empower vulnerable, at-risk children in Colombia through a variety of educational, recreational, and sports-based activities. Your generous support is helping to keep these children safe from the dangers in their communities, and allowing them to develop important life skills in order to build happy, healthy, and positive futures. We believe that, when equipped with the right skills and knowledge, children are able to transform their own lives, their communities, and Colombia at large. 

On October 21, within the framework of the Football for Peace project in Acadesan, the Sports with Principles (DcP) training ended for 20 teachers and leaders from 16 Acadesan communities, in the San Juan River basin. The training was carried out in cooperation with the support of the GIZ Sport for development program; It was developed between August and October with a practical theoretical approach.

The DcP methodology is based on 5 basic principles, trust; respect and tolerance; empathy; fair play; and justice and discipline, and considers the cognitive, social, sporting and physical dimensions of boys, girls, adolescents and young people (NNAJ) at each stage of development; articulating them to promote comprehensive development, as well as the competencies and skills necessary for life in society.

The training provides teachers and community leaders with the tools to apply the methodology in their communities. The second stage of the project will be the exercise of replicas of the sessions by the people trained with the children of their communities.

Thank you! 

This project has proven to have real, tangible impacts on the lives of vulnerable, at-risk children in various communities in Colombia. It is only with the support from organisations like GlobalGiving that we are able to achieve this progress, and stay true to the name of our organisation: providing children with the mindset, skills, and opportunity to change Colombia. We thank you again for your support!

Dear friends at GlobalGiving,

From all of us here at Children Change Colombia, we want to thank you for supporting us by showing this important project for children in Colombia throughout the world! Your generous support is helping keep at risk-children safe from the dangers in their communities, and allowing them to develop important life skills and strengthen their capacities to build positive futures for themselves. We believe that equipped with the right skills and knowledge, children can transform their own lives, their communities and Colombia itself.

We want to share with our GG donors that the project is about to start next month. The final funds have been raising in order to complete the minimum amount we need to develop the activities. Our friends in Acadesan are now starting the planning and strategic relation with communities. Although we expect to begin next month, the Chocó area has been hit by some conflict dynamics by illegal groups that want to conquer terriroties. However, we are confident we can start soon and we’ll let you know about our progress on the next report due. 

Football for Peace aims to strengthen socioemotional skills of children to prevent forced recruitment, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, and promote gender inequality in the nine communities of the San Juan River area, Chocó: Mungidó, Peñitas, Isla mono, Dipurdú, Charco Largo, San Agustín-Las Brisas, Perrú, Nagrí-San Miguel. For this project, the GIZ sports for development methodology and GIZ care routes to prevent sexual violencewill be implemented.

This methodology aims for CYP to learn values such as respect, team work and social skills through sports and uses existing Colombian concepts related to sports for development methodology, to international approaches and modern methods of sports pedagogy. GIZ teams will travel to the project area in order to train and monitor the implementation of this methodology in the practice of football. Likewise, it's vital to adapt and build pitches in which the different CYP teams and their teachers can train and advance in the program objectives. On the other hand, the GIZ sexual violence prevention protocol will be addressed within gender equality activities.

The education training will center around developing children's social and emotional skills through football. The trainer role is linked to the development of various skills like leading, advising and guiding, etc. In addition, The teacher has to align their classes to the needs, expectations, and capacities of the CYP, which change according to their level of development, which will allow them to improve self awareness, to empathise for others and to make assertive and responsible decisions for themselves and others.