Inverse inclusion education in Colombia

Considering the current social dynamics -pandemic scenario- and, hence, the emerging needs and interests of our deaf and non-deaf students, we have been working to guarantee their inclusion and human development, via:

• On-line classes: since 2020, we have continued implementing our classes for all our 170 students with and without hearing disability. All the daily classes are given through both spoken Spanish and Colombian sign language.
• Mental health: strengthening soft skills –resilient- to face challenging scenarios of the future. We found out that during 2020’s lockdowns, 40% of our adolescent students were suffering depression.
• Colombian sign language app: we are working on its creation (online and offline) for the families with a member with hearing disability. This is an answer to the 80% of families that, even with a deaf son or daughter at home, don’t know this language. This is fundamental for deaf students’ inclusion and communication.

In Colombia, 80% of the deaf people are born in poor contexts. Their access to quality services, including education and health, is therefore limited. In addition, their communication possibilities was deeply affected with the Covid-19 scenario. In the case of our adolescent students, this communication issue affected their mental health. 40% of them were diagnosed during the 2020 year with depression, including suicidal ideation.

We found out two roots for the described problem: first, miscommunication at home as the deaf students relatives (80%) didn’t manage the Colombian sign language. It made the students life a hermetic space in which there was not option to express their feelings neither having any deep communication to reinforce their emotional skills; increasing family conflicts and violence.

Second, the need from education to bring the necessary psycho-emotional tools to strengthen resilient skills and support preparing the students for the incoming life challenges. Trainings must be available on-line and face-to-face to give timely answers to the present context. Digital skills and tools are also an increasing need that has not been historically functional in the poorest communities like the ones we work with. We have been giving efforts to improve that fact.  

Considering the current social dynamics -pandemic scenario- and, hence, the emerging needs and interests of our deaf and non-deaf students, we have been working to guarantee their inclusion and human development, via:

• On-line classes: since 2020, we have continued implementing our classes for all our 170 students with and without hearing disability. All the daily classes are given through both spoken Spanish and Colombian sign language.
• Mental health: strengthening soft skills –resilient- to face challenging scenarios of the future. We found out that during 2020’s lockdowns, 40% of our adolescent students were suffering depression. We are building the “Psycho-emotional tools-kit for teachers”.
• Colombian sign language app: we are working on its creation (online and offline) for the families with a member with hearing disability. This is an answer to the 80% of families that, even with a deaf son or daughter at home, don’t know this language. This is fundamental for deaf students’ inclusion and communication. Then, we plan to multiply this solution in other educative scenarios, to spread all over the country this inclusive method. 

The main difficulty that the deaf community has, according to their physical condition, is their communication with other people. Special communication skills development are fundamental in their educative process. They can communicate via oralism or sign language; the last one must be learned by their relatives, too, to make communication possible at home.

The 2020´s pandemic scenario evidenced that most of the families with a deaf children have not learned Colombian sign language to communicate with them. Therefore, the children have no deep communication with their relatives; their school friends and teachers become their only near social circle. It multiplies conflictive situations at home and reduces the communication and human development possibilities of the deaf children. Lockdowns exacerbated this problems, bringing them to depression and other mental health issues.

The deaf children lives, as well as the ones of their families will radically and positively change with our initiative. Emotional skills will be transversal part of the different subjects our students learn at school. Resilience, roads to healthy express emotions, crisis support, assertive communication and other psycho-emotional tools will be strengthened in the students and their families. Moreover, part of the plan is to facilitate the families Colombian sign language learning; via an online and offline app.

The skills we will support to develop are meant to last the whole life of our beneficiaries. We are helping to change lives and to multiply the Colombian sign language learning as another language that deserves to be taught at schools and become a common tool for communication in other scenarios different than the deaf communities’ ones.  

It is completely aligned with the Challenge as it is aligned with the SDGs. It gives innovative answers for the inclusion of people with disabilities, through the use of technologies. It has a comprehensive approach, considering the characteristics of the target population. It brings tools for life for different social groups. It is disruptive when we take into account the educative tradition for historically excluded social groups in Colombia. 

We selected the stage “Prototype” because we are already setting up some stages of the whole initiative. We are implementing and testing its different processes and working on the preparation of the other stages to be implemented. We are testing it with the teachers, students and students relatives of the ICAL School. All of them belong to more than 10 municipalities of the Cundinamarca Department, Colombia. For the moment, they are about 130 people but, at the end of this same year, the number will increase. 

Our foundation school already has an innovative solution: brings formal education in an adapted environment in which a traditional minority (deaf students) are the majority -78%- of the students. We have broken traditional barriers in education, building scenarios for real inclusive education.

Continuing with our methodology, we want to complement and improve it with the use of technologies, so that we are able to reach more and more students. We plan to make the sign language an attractive option to learn, for everybody.

Our approach to hearing disability and social inclusion is innovative in Colombia. We are sure our actions, as well as our proposal presented here, will positively influence the disability local public policy. 

Today, our Foundation serves more than 800 people, including teachers, deaf and hearing adolescents, and their immediate relatives). 

With our pilot we are serving today 130 people. We plan to increase this number the next year, to reach our total number of beneficiaries (800 people).

In 5 years, we plan to increase the impact of our initiative to reach 1200 people.

Our indicators:

• Number of students by hearing condition
• Number of teachers in our team
• Number of depression diagnosis in adolescent students, as well as other qualitative mental health indicators
• Number of students’ relatives that know Colombian sign language
• Number of students’ relatives participating in the psycho-emotional trainings we offer
• Participations in the disability local public policy construction and its results
• Number of municipalities covered by our solutions

48 people full-time staff.

2 contractors.

2 volunteers.

Our education team is composed by more than 20 teachers, as well as by Social workers and psychologists. They have very near contact with the students and with their families. Therefore, we are always in touch with our communities’ needs and interests. We have been working in the territory for 60 years, with long-time workers (many of them with 10 to 20 years with us).

We are an exemplary education institution in the territory. Almost everybody in the region knows about us and about our experience and education model. 

The 30% of our teachers team is composed by people with disabilities, some of them are graduates from our School. There is gender inclusion and fair salaries for all of them (compared to many other similar organizations in the country). 

Mainly, because we count with a solution to one of the pressing challenges of our times: accessing quality education for low-income and disabled communities. As it is replicable, we want to support other children and their families reaching our education model, no matter geographical barriers. To reach that goal, we need new allies support and assessment. 

We don't have any specific organization in mind. All like-minded organizations and everybody interesed in our education model and initiatives is welcome.

We are a non-profit organization with 60 years of history working for the inclusion and well-being of people with hearing disabilities in Colombia. We have developed our own and innovative education model, called "Inverse inclusion". 

We bring formal education to low-income deaf and non-deaf children and teenagers in an environment where the first group represents the majority (72%). We use ICTs and face-to-face classes to support sign language and oralism learning; supporting their life-project construction and human development.

We are a non-profit organization with 60 years of history working for the inclusion and well-being of people with hearing disabilities in Colombia. We have developed our own and innovative education model, called "Inverse inclusion". 

We bring formal education to low-income deaf and non-deaf children and teenagers in an environment where the first group represents the majority (72%). We use ICTs and face-to-face classes to support sign language and oralism learning; supporting their life-project construction and human development.