Fundación FAN

Jugar para Sanar is a physchotherapeutic care center, which provides care and attention to children and adolescents, victims of sexual abuse. It is a beautiful initiative that started around ten years ago which uses play and art therapy to achieve mental and emotional healing of the patients. As of today, we have three Jugar Para Sanar care centers in Medellín, and our aim is to be able to expand this project to other municipalities and territories in Antioquia and Colombia. If we were selected as winners, we would use it to be able to expand our scope, getting to rural territories. We would build and have more centers to provide care and attention, we would adapt these spaces, including magical decorations, toys, art materials, which all make up evocative environments which make it easier for kids to speak up about what happened to them and feel safe. This would result in many more children receiving help, children who have no voice and are in the dark about what happened to them and the abuse that they suffered. We also believe that expanding this project will create a lot of awareness about sexual abuse in Colombia, especially in children.

Luz Amalia Botero is a social entrepeneur, a source of inspiration, and a role model. She has worked all of her professional live towards helping children in Colombia, she has identified barriers that children and adolescents are faced against, and she has worked to overthrow these barriers and obstacles. Some of the issues that she has worked on throughout her career include; sexual abuse, lack of transportation, hunger, access to tecnhology, prevention of teenage preganancies, nutritional burdens, etc. She has identified problems and created solutions and transformed them into opportunities for children in Colombia to improve their lifes.

She is passionate about helping those in need.

For 16 years she has been leading Fundación FAN, as the Executive Director, she has undertaken large projects that work towards contributing to the contruction of an equitable and peaceful Colombia.

Luz Amalia wants Fundación FAN to keep growing, being able to help more families and kids. She believes that Jugar para Sanar is an innovative and succesful therapeutic care model, which can and should exist everywhere in Colombia. Her biggest goal is to be able to escalte this project at a national level.

Fundación FAN is an NGO located in Medellín, Colombia, founded 55 years ago. We are leaders and reference for education models and comprehensive care for early childhood (0-5 years old). Our purpose is to provide care to children, adolescents and families, who live in vulnerable economic and social situations, providing care through three main pilars; pegagodical support, nutritional support and phsycosocial care. What drives our work at Fundación FAN is giving children better life opportunities, a future with hope, and ensuring that they grow up "sanos, inteligentes y felices"; healthy, intelligent and happy. We also work towards preventing teenage pregnancies, preventing sexual violence,we have nutritional recovery programs, and educations and pedagogy services for families, parents and caregivers.

Jugar Para Sanar uses therapies based on the language of art and play to achieve mental and emotional healing of the children and adolscents. This model is documented and edorsed by the ICBF - Insituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar -, and when it was created it was advised by MONT SINAI. We also have very strong allies that work alongside with us and trust this project and the methodology used, we weork with The Childhood Unit of the Mayor´s Office, Confama, Sura, which are very reputable organizations in Colombia.

The therapy approach is specialized and designed for children, with the use of games, toys, and art, providing them with the tools to be able to talk about what happened to them, feeling safe at the same time.

Our care is extensive, we make sure that kids receive enough therapy sessions, guaranteeing that they can heal the bond that was broken when they were abused. We also teach children that they should speak up, we provide them with tools to ensure that they are protected, and we also work with family members to ensure that they know what signs to look out for to ensure that it will not happen again.

In light of the deficits of attention and care of vulnerable population (children, adolescnets and families in Colombia, at Fundación FAN we have generated a set of social innovations aimed at solving different issues. We have reduced the digital gap by giving many families access to technology, we have standarized visions and created parenting guidelines based in child development, we have created different modalities of attention, we work to reduce and prevent teenage prengancies, wo work to prevent sexual violence and other types of violation of children´s rights, we have a nutritional recovery center. We have numerous initiatives and projects that we have carried out with the help of many allies, such as foundations, private and public business sector, NGOs, local government.

Every year we provide care and attention to more than 10,000 kids. We have certified over 50,000 caregivers and parentings in effective parenting guidelines.

Jugar para Sanar has a very big impact, we believe that every child who recovers after being abused, is a child whose life was changed forever. It is an initiative that changes people´s life, and we believe that when victims make a full emotional recovery, we are helping in breaking the cycle of abused person who later on in life becomes an abuser.