A project from the Comuna to the Comuna
COMUNA PROJECT FOUNDATION
We are a non-profit foundation located in the Las Independencias neighborhood of Comuna 13 in Medellín. We work based on social innovation projects always with a focus on education as a transforming engine. Our main objective is the generation of knowledge that leads to practical transformations within communities like ours. We think from the comuna knowing that from the heart of this special community we can generate transformative ideas that reach every corner of the city.
In 2019 we formalized a strategic alliance with the Junta de Acción Comunal de Independencia 1, turning the board's own space into a center for education and ideation. Together with them, universities, companies and schools that have been joining our Nomad School and ideation meetings, we have been building a set of innovative ideas for the service of our community and the surrounding communities. We are, above all, social innovators for love and vocation :)
ONGOING PROJECTS
Let´s talk & share
100% free English classes led by Professor David Correa.
This project is our most precious child since in 2019 it gave beginning to our intervention of the Independencia 1 JAC hall, work done in alliance with part of the team of the community action board. With a group of volunteer teachers we began to explore different pedagogies and didactics to captivate the nearly 50 students who came every night to our classes. This was the proof that education is the means to connect with the reality of our people, and that beyond a workshop or a course, what we generate are safe spaces where people can spend their free time doing something that makes them grow.
Classes are held every Monday and Thursday at the JAC headquarters in Independencia 1, free for the whole community.
Healthy Homes together with Cementos Argos
Home improvement project (floors, kitchens and bathrooms) in alliance with Cementos Argos. Last year we achieved the goal of 130 beneficiary families in the Independencia 1 and 2 neighborhoods, where each family was in charge of the self-construction of the improvements in their homes with a 40-hour training accompaniment by SENA, and the technical and logistical assistance of the Berta Martínez Foundation and the Cementos Argos team.
By 2023 we have a projection of benefiting another 150 families, raising the scope of the project to the upper part of Independencia 2 and Independencia 3 where the economic spillover of tourism fails to raise the quality of life of the inhabitants.
In addition to making structural changes in the homes, we took the CAPSI project to each of the homes, analyzing basic needs and possible psychosocial problems. Based on the beautiful results of 2022, we remain convinced that, working together with the private sector, the acceleration of essential transformations within our community is more efficient and pragmatic when it comes to implementation.
Araguaney-Guayacán
Social enterprise born from our school led by the teacher Auristella Tritto. A master craftswoman from her sister country Venezuela, she began as a volunteer giving free classes of small handicrafts to a group of children who were begging.
Over the years, these classes became a safe space for dozens of migrant women motivated by the idea of entrepreneurship with their new art. From there, the Araguaney-Guayacán social enterprise was born, an encounter between Colombian and Venezuelan culture that can be seen in the bags and garments hand-sewn by about 20 weavers.
Classes are held every Wednesday and Saturday at the JAC headquarters in Independencia 1, free of charge for the entire community.
Teatro Serendipity a Fundación Eva Moreno
Escuela gratuita de teatro. Para este proyecto nos hemos aliado con la Fundación Eva moreno de la ciudad de Caracas y su líder- fundador Ixel Marcano. Comenzamos en la sede de la JAC de Independencia 1 con un grupo de niños, en su mayoría migrantes venezolanos. Con el acompañamiento juicioso de sus familiares se presentó la obra Pueblo Sol, obra que ha tenido la oportunidad de presentarse en diferentes espacios culturales de la ciudad.
En este momento se están dando clases todos los jueves en la mañana y en la tarde gratuitas para niñas y niños de diferentes edades. Con este proyecto el propósito es mostrarles la importancia del arte en sus vidas poniéndolos en diferentes espacios de ciudad a mostrar su talento. Con esto se adquiere seguridad ante los otros, fortalece la confianza en lo que se hace y educa en la importancia de cooperar con los otros para lograr objetivos.
COMÚN Laboratorio Gastronómico
El programa de salud y nutrición AliMente de la fundación Comuna Project tiene como objetivo la prevención y optimización de salud mental dentro de la comunidad del barrio Las Independencias de la Comuna 13 en Medellín. Hacemos énfasis en la salud mental enlazada a la nutrición, entendiendo que bajo una dieta variada, equilibrada y suficiente en micronutrientes (vitaminas, minerales y aminoácidos), podemos hacer frente a los altos índices identificados bajo el programa CAPSI de estrés, ansiedad y depresión, además del daño colateral de las mismas que se refleja en un alto nivel de adiciones a drogas, tabaco y alcohol.
Programa:
- Pedagogía gastronómica: clases de cocina saludable con énfasis en el equilibrio del microbioma humano. (No procesados y no comida rápida, ejemplo).
- Talleres de salud mental y buenos hábitos.
- Restaurante comunitario COMÚN; alimentación gratuita bajo seguimiento a población identificada en riesgo. Venta de alimentación balanceada.
Pedagogía gastronómica: dos talleres mensuales.
Talleres de salud mental y buenos hábitos; dos talleres mensuales.
Educational outings
Educational outings for universities, schools and business groups that want to play an active part in solving the social challenges that we live in the communities of Medellin.
Our long experience in community tourism opened the question of how to best take advantage of the approaches of tourists to communities like ours, and all the complexity that this entails. In order to give a prompt and practical response to this need to understand the impact of this activity in which our community has been involved, we want to add all kinds of ideas and new questions that help us understand how to generate joint actions that end up protecting the communities and their culture.
The experience to which we invite is what we call Nomadic School, taking study and teaching beyond the classroom or workplace. We do immersions in Comuna 13, focusing on our neighborhood, Las Independencias. We explore the socio-cultural capital that emerges from daily life and how this is affected by different actors such as tourism.
Urban Garden
With the construction of the new section of Viaducto Nueva Ladera in Independencia 2, we saw the possibility of using a garden that was under construction to turn it into a small laboratory where we explored how to teach environmental and health issues from these spaces.
We have held several meetings with the University of Medellin in which students from the university and children from the community have had the opportunity to exchange their spaces and experiences.
For 2023 we plan to increase community training on composting and the use of medicinal plants in the home. We are also exploring sun-drying techniques for medicinal and aromatic plants that are low-cost and easy to replicate on the terraces.
Tour ¨caminá pa´la comuna¨
Tours por la comuna 13 para todo público. Operamos grupos pequeños y grandes con capacidad de atención diaria, en español e inglés con guías locales y allegados a la fundación.
Este es un viaje por la historia y origen de la comunidad donde con los años, el movimiento cultural del hip-hop y el urbanismo social fueron la unión perfecta para convertir a nuestro barrio en el epicentro del turismo de ciudad, parada obligatoria para todos los visitantes que llegan a Medellín y quieren vivir el arte y la cultura de sus barrios populares.
Trabajamos en alianza con variedad de empresas operadoras y agencias de viajes quienes gracias a sus clientes de alrededor del mundo hacen posible el sustento de los diferentes procesos formativos que ofertamos.
Robotics with Andrés
These classes are born from the passion that the teacher Andrés Felipe Zapata feels for robotics and artificial intelligence, branches in which in addition to expertise is something in which he has been working for several years. The teacher came to us with the idea of starting a seedbed for children where they are taught the basics of programming and robotics. His experience in other territories showed him that a child is able to program before starting to read, since this process is much more intuitive.
The classes are held every Tuesday at the JAC headquarters in Independencia 1, completely free of charge. At the moment the children are in the second level where they have already begun to move small robots from their cell phones.
Our goal is to teach them how to use the tools they have at hand and how to make appropriate use of technology. Our proximity to CAT4, the new public university inaugurated in Comuna 13, with a focus on technology, turns this seedbed into a bridge so that the new generations can find a direction in the great city bet where the demand for trained programmers and experts in technology opens a universe of opportunities.
C13 Social Lab
Space located at the headquarters of the JAC of Independencia 1 designed as a center for generating ideas for the quality of life of people in the community and surrounding areas.
We started working with the tool of St. Paul's University of Chicago, known as ABCD (Asset Based Community Development) where we conducted five focus groups and surveyed 381 people. Based on the analysis of this data, we started our educational offering, which is still in place and continues to be the basis for all the research work we have been doing.
The goal is to understand in order to be able to act better as a foundation together with our friends and allies. At this moment we are focusing our analysis objectives on the tourism factor, investigating its impact on the community. The central idea is to manage to control the already existing dynamics by generating reports that give an exact proof of the voice of the community affected by the activity, and that these, serve for the mitigation of the problems that are lived here daily to other communities that live from tourism or that want to open their doors in the future.
CAPSI (Psychosocial Care Center)
Project led by psychologist Leidy TObón In times when people's ways and ways of living have had to be modified due to a global contingency for which we as a society were not prepared, finding deeper solutions to the most immediate needs became a priority for all components of society.
Promoting Mental Health from community-based organizations facilitates understanding with communities, thus creating the conditions to effectively identify and measure the capacities, skills and potential of each of the territories where it is promoted, ensuring the future construction of metrics and indicators that serve all stakeholders in the public, private and academic sectors; maximizing the use of all types of resources and capabilities available to program participants.
By understanding our action polygon and understanding the different realities that coexist there, a program was designed to accompany individuals and families participating in each of the educational programs offered by the Escuela Nómada de Comuna Project in the territory; at the same time, information from the health tables of the Community Action Boards of the neighborhood and their short, medium and long term requirements for the construction of social capital was taken into account.
SAC (Audio Classroom System) together with the International Rescue Committee-IRC
One of the biggest challenges we have in the community is the high student dropout rate between the sixth and ninth grades. This age is usually the entry into the labor market for many girls and boys with a high possibility of no return. To face this challenge we have joined the SAC initiative of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) who have been doing a very judicious work with the Venezuelan population in Colombia. Once the challenge has been identified, which is to help those who are at risk of desertion or who have dropped out, whether Colombian or Venezuelan, we provide them with the following support:
To offer alternatives that help to overcome some of these barriers.
barriers, the AudioClase System is presented as a school reinforcement service that through audiovisual lessons based on the flexible model Walk in Secondary School and a chatbot system, seeks to facilitate a learning experience in which children and adolescents from 6th to 9th grade level their knowledge and improve their school performance.
These reinforcements are dictated by the teacher Auristella Tritto at the headquarters of the JAC of Independencia 1, free of charge for the community with prior registration.
Warriors Project
Safe space led by Professor Amelia Piedrahita where women, mostly senior citizens, share their crafts, stories and hopes.
We started making crafts for Christmas, but the same members together with the teacher asked to continue meeting every week in the Independencia 1 JAC hall. This year the project grew to the Independencia 2 neighborhood, where another group of women has begun to take ownership of their JAC with the same purpose: to give value to their time.
These workshops are held on Tuesdays in Independencia 1 and Thursdays in Independencia 2, free of charge for the community with previous registration.
Team
Those who believe in, love and yearn for this community.
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SOLIDARITY FUND
To keep our project active, free classes and workshops, our community restaurant and the salary of the whole team, we have opened the Solidarity Fund. If you want to support us, use the following links:
Allies and collaborators
