Fundación ICAL - Colombia

Considering the current social dynamics -pandemic scenario- and, hence, the emerging needs and interests of our disabled and non-disabled 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 any 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 disabled children are born in poor contexts. Their access to quality services, including education and health, is therefore limited. In addition, for the deaf ones, 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, as well as integrating their parents’ participation, no matter where they are located. It has a comprehensive approach, considering the characteristics of the target population. It brings tools for life for different social groups. It is disruptive if we take into account the educational tradition for historically excluded social groups, such as disabled children and their families 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 (disabled students, mainly deaf) 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. More than 2700 have been educated at our inclusive school. We are sure our actions, as well as our proposal presented here, will positively influence the disability local public policy. 

For our Colombian sign language classes we are working on the development of an app to be used by people online and offline. To make it real, we are working in alliance with another Colombian NGO, called Fundación El Origen, which counts with the technological expertise.

We are designing the structure of the app, based on our knowledge and experience with the Colombian sign language. El Origen will traduce this content into digital language. The app will work with friendly avatars that will teach each sign in a very dynamic and friendly way. It can be used by anybody and anywhere. The initiative is divided into three phases: one first module with an emotional connotation (directed to families communication); the second one, a whole Colombian sign language course (with all the known signs); and a third, is a simultaneous translator from spoken Spanish to sign language. The first module will be launched in November, 2021. 

More information about the type of digital solution can be found in the Web page of our ally, Fundación El Origen, here: https://en.fundacionelorigen.org

We still don't have a demo prepared to expose here as the APP will be launched in 3 months. 

About privacy or security concerns, we are working on it with our ally. In addition, we have been developing meetings with another NGO that specifically works on digital security issues in Colombia. We plan to work with them to prevent this kind of problems by introducing all the legal and digital tools to protect our users. 

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 2000 people.

Next year:

• 800 people benefited by our solution
• All the teachers of the Foundation benefitted by the psycho-emotional tools kit
• Replicating our initiative tools (Psycho-emotional tools kit for teachers and Colombian sign language app) with two other related organizations in other regions of the country.
• Improvement of our students’ –deaf and hearing ones- mental health diagnoses
• More than 2000 people benefited by our solution
• More teachers across the country benefited by the solution
• Replicating our initiative tools (Psycho-emotional tools kit for teachers and Colombian sign language app) with at least 10 other related organizations in other regions of the country.
• Inclusion of our initiative in the disability local public policy (Chía municipality)

In 5 years:

We will reach this goals via the strong relationships we have developed with other similar organizations around the country. We also have a strong relationship with the public sector (Chia’s Mayoralty) as we are supporting their construction of the Municipality’s Disability Public Policy. We also count with a great team that is committed with our Foundation mission, we are all working together to make it possible. It makes part of our strategic planning -2020-2025- called “Together for Inclusion”.

Our indicators:

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

Our education team is composed by 28 people, including teachers, social workers and psychologists. All of them are full-time staff.

As a whole, our organization counts with a 48 full-time staff.

Our solution team has 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 inclusive educational model. 

We always design the projects based on participation processes lead by the solution team, the one that includes social workers, psychologists, a sociologist and other professionals.

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 other similar organizations in the country). 

Because we want to multiply and increase the impact of our inclusive education initiative. Many other children and adolescents with disabilities in Latin America deserve to be educated through our high quality educational model, specially designed for them. We find the TPrize a good way to reach that goal.

As a NGO, our educational model was not initially designed as a business model. It would be very important for us to bring clarity to that fundamental issue to reach our sustainability. We have already 60 years of experience, surviving these last challenging years of pandemic scenario, watching other similar NGOs ending their attention for ever. Therefore, we are aware about our need to continue evolving with the present and future challenges; where restructuring our business model, finding new investors, improving our public relations, and reaching more clients are mandatory actions to continue existing and growing. 

Private or Non-government organizations interested in becoming regular donors to our mission, as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. 

Also, other education organizations that work with children with disabilities, to share experiences and to help us multiply our model with their population.