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.
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.
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.
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.
Team
Those who believe in, love and yearn for this community.
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
