Asociación Civil Hacemos (Hacemos NGO)

Hacemos is a civic association, made up of young and not so young people, who seek to generate positive social transformations in our country.

We turn ideas into action with a determined team and a well developed method. We feel challenged by reality and we connect people who are willing to change it, so we found the method to produce positive, measurable change. We promote projects and initiatives of people who are willing to lead transformations in their surrounding community: in their neighborhood, in the environment, in a productive process, in their lives and the lives of the people around them. 

Value proposal:

We help children and young people in vulnerable situations develop by promoting their insertion into the opportunities the world holds for them through school support programs, mainly literacy training.

Our mission:

In a country where 69% of adolescents and children live below the poverty line, we focus on literacy training so that children between 5 and 12 years old learn to read, write and develop reading comprehension, promoting their autonomy and inclusion.

In this way, we seek to help children develop their skills so that they can continue learning throughout life. Without initial literacy, a good future performance is not possible. With literacy, a lifetime of learning opportunities opens up for them and those around them.

Our vision:

In this first stage, our objective is to double our efforts to reach more children every day in the most vulnerable regions in our country. We also seek to multiply volunteers because we know there are thousands willing to donate their time to help children in Argentina progress, and at Hacemos we offer a realizable “how” to achieve it.

In a second stage, we seek to incorporate into our action field other proposals that have to do with the productive world: jobs, employment and the generation of economic value. In this sense, we are working with people linked to technology and entrepreneurship to achieve it.

Our values:

Teamwork

Union

Leadership

Equality and solidarity

Freedom

Permanent evolution

Academic perspective

Training

Tolerance and respect

Courage

Proximity and sustained presence

The leadership of Hacemos is carried out by a person with a long professional and public career, being one of the most important social and political leaders in Argentina. María Eugenia Vidal is a current national congresswoman and former governor of the Province of Buenos Aires (the district where 45% of Argentina's poor population is concentrated). The association's Board of Directors includes a national senators and congresswomen, state legislators and current and former civil servants in Education and Development.

Within the organization María Eugenia Vidal is a close and horizontal leader that is involved in macro and micro decisions; she makes recommendations and provides guidance, while encouraging the growth of its members.

She has outstanding critical analysis skills and is constantly attentive to changes in the context that may favor or hinder Hacemos' strategy.

She has an extensive network of links in all local sectors (public, private, civil society, journalism, unions, international cooperation) and several personalities from abroad. This makes her permanently aware of the context, trends and decisions of the actors around us. She is also a university teacher, so research and co-creation of knowledge is not only in her area of expertise but also her personal passion.

Experience: the leadership and team have between 15 and 20 years of experience in social management and public policies; especially in social and educational policies aimed at the most vulnerable populations.

Availability: It is our priority for 2024 to allocate the time necessary to fully grasp the LEAP Project opportunity.

Academic training: we are multidisciplinary team made up of political scientists, economists, social workers, communicators, psychologists and others with experience in managing programs and social policies focused on community work throughout the national territory.

Diversity: Our team is religiously and cultural diverse and based on gender equity (6 women 5 men)

Flexibility and adaptation: experience in public management has given this team a flexible work dynamic characterized the ability to adapt to extraordinary contexts and situations.

We are a mature team since most of us have been working together in complex projects and situations, and we have always spent time, even in the most adverse crisis times, to evaluate, diagnose, understand and plan our actions. We value theory and research, not only because many of us come from academic backgrounds or spare time to continue teaching in university, but also because we believe it makes us better. Understanding current trends, gaining perspective and especially measuring the impact of what we do, is a core value of our team.

Hacemos is made up of individuals with backgrounds in political management and technical territorial work, averaging around twenty years of experience in social and educational development strategies.

The team's experience in the field allows Hacemos to have an extensive and diverse network of community organizations scattered in vulnerable neighborhoods and the opportunity to manage sustained alliances with civil society organizations and religious institutions with whom we have been working for the last few years.

Representatives of these community organizations are individuals who work and mostly reside in the neighborhoods where the strategies are implemented. They are legitimate community leaders who know and share the customs and dynamics of the neighborhood. They are often particularly influential with children and young people as they usually lead activities related to education, food assistance, culture, and sports.

These social leaders from each community organization are also a fundamental pillar to complement educational strategies with families and schools in the area.

It is worth noting that most of these community organizations have proposals for school support, usually without methodology and with scarce resources, which significantly contribute to supporting schooling. This has been the reason behind the enormous acceptance that the Program First ABC is demonstrating as it provides training for educators, didactic material, and a methodological tool with a specific objective such as literacy.

Additionally, Hacemos has a strategic alliance with Fundación Potenciar Argentina, dedicated to promoting various educational strategies. This organization is made up of pedagogues, linguists, specialists in letter morphology, communicators, and experts in educational management.

Hacemos and Potenciar promote literacy together and in coordination with the teams, our program is in constant joint evaluation with periodic feedback to improve and optimize the methodology.

We teach children aged 5 to 12 in socially vulnerable contexts to read and write to reduce literacy inequalities

Argentina has an educational coverage of 98%, which means a great majority of children are included in the school system. However, 1 out of 2 children aged between 8 and 9 don´t understand what they read. This means that half the primary school kids cannot understand a text designed for their age, locate information or make inferences, even when this information is highlighted and reiterated. The first two years in primary education (first and second grande in Argentina) constitute the stage in which the literacy proposal is meant to be displayed and absorbed. Reading and writing begins in kindergarten, consolidates in Primary school and continues to be mastered in all stages of life. Being literate is the basic condition for the whole learning path, and is the stepping stone for social inclusion and economic insertion.

Compared to other countries in the region, Argentina is showing a downturn in all educational screenings, with our country ranking among the two countries with the worst results, as expressed in the latest comparison on learning achievements

Most importantly, in a context where 69% of adolescents and children in Argentina live below the poverty line (UNICEF 2024), the profound inequity that surrounds the learning context is expressed by 40% of kids in poor neighborhoods achieving the lowest screenings, whereas only 10% of higher income kids achieve the lowest screening ranking.

Furthermore, literacy is a great predictor of school career. There are studies that show literacy determines success or failure at school, keeping a close relationship with promotion and retention within the school system. In Argentina, Second and Third grade have the highest repetition rates of primary education. The Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE 2019- UNESCO) evidenced that 46% of third grade students cannot get past Level 1 in Reading Comprehension, level associated with students beginning the literacy process. Also, 68,1% of children evaluated in Sixth grade cannot get past Level 2 in the same field, revealing there is a very small population of Primary Level students with satisfactory results in the area. The situation that arises from this low and slow literacy rate in Argentine children brings along difficulties for children in other fields of knowledge since they lack tools to obtain information from the materials available at school, a problem growing bigger in every school year since texts become more complex and longer.

The literacy program "Primero ABC" is designed to introduce children aged 5 to 12 who live in socially vulnerable contexts to the learning of reading, writing, and reading comprehension from an entertaining perspective designed for early ages. We contribute directly to Sustainability Development Goals 1, 2, 4, 10 and 17.

Based on the identification of community centers that operate outside of school hours, we establish literacy workshops where children attend twice a week for two hours over six months. During this period, children attend exclusively to develop or strengthen their reading and writing skills.

In these literacy workshops, which are usually community centers, churches, sports clubs, among others, a classroom environment is guaranteed to promote learning. In this sense, the program has carefully established guidelines to ensure that the criteria of this environment is met in all the centers where we operate.

Likewise, school materials are guaranteed and assigned to each child. In many cases, where the social context is most unequal, a meal is provided for the attending children.

The program is structured around the development of three manuals to address all the reading and writing needs to succeed in school. Its richness is reflected in the inclusion of a wide variety of authentic materials, both literary and non-literary, which guarantee a diverse and enriching learning experience. Additionally, it stands out for the use of metacognitive reading and writing strategies, promoting autonomy in the learning process.

To guide the independent learning process of the children, the figure of a literacy mentor is incorporated: volunteers who are trained exclusively to carry out this task. The literacy mentor does not require previous training, although trajectories in the educational world are positively valued, as the program includes a training of four sessions where any literate adult can acquire the necessary knowledge to teach how to read and write.

Direct beneficiaries are children between 5 and 12 years old who attend community centers for school support and social support after school hours. Indirect beneficiaries are the children's families, since by empowering them with reading and writing skills, family environments are positively favored by promoting the communication and participation of its members in the educational process.

It is worth noting that the manuals and the action method were developed by the Fundación Potenciar Argentina, an organization made up of experts in educational management, linguists, and educators, with whom HACEMOS has established a consolidated working alliance that enriches all the educational actions of our organization.

In conclusion, it is a program focused on literacy, established in flexible environments that guarantee learning conditions; where, based on the proposals designed in the three reading books and with the facilitation of a literacy mentor children can learn to read, write, and develop reading comprehension in a period of six months. 

Check out what we do in the following video: HACEMOS

We are developing this pilot test and the objective is that we can draw evidence from it that serves as a basis for our own research and studies.

Our solution is based on academic studies that have demonstrated the importance of literacy for learning and development. Among them, Buchbinder, McCallum and Volman (2019) show that the intensity and quality of literacy proposals tend to determine school success or failure. In line with this, we believe in the importance of providing an additional proposal to that offered by schools in vulnerable contexts that focuses on literacy in ages between 5 and 12 years.

The report produced by the Observatory of Argentines for Education of (Tiramontii, G., Nistal, M & Orlicki, E. 2023) “Reading and inequality. Comparisons between Argentina and Latin America” reveals the inequality that exists in Argentina, where 61.5% of the most vulnerable students do not reach basic reading levels in third grade.

In turn, the results produced by UNESCO in the TERCE-2013 and ERCE-2019 tests indicate that students in Argentina show significant difficulties in appropriating reading and writing.

Finally, authors such as Terigi (2009) and Lavatelli (2014) point out the need to address the educational trajectories of children in vulnerable conditions and the importance of the factors that affect these trajectories, highlighting the  participation in learning experiences that complement school.

The first statistical indication reveals that although Argentina has a level of educational coverage of 98%, 1 in every 2 children who finish 3rd grade does not understand what they read. It means that half of the children in the middle of primary school cannot understand a text according to their age. Likewise, 61.8% of children who belong to the tercil of the lowest socioeconomic level do not reach the minimum reading level.

School segregation is evident in Argentina and interdisciplinary actions are necessary, providing new experiences that mitigate inequality. Undoubtedly, it is the greatest challenge of this solution to serve as a case study to provide evidence to the discussion in Argentina.

Also, we would like to point out that in the process of conducting our own research and collecting evidence we have faced the following challenges:

Evidence: The main goal we set for ourselves, and which we consider a barrier to the expansion and replicability of the First ABC Program, lies in the ability to demonstrate the feasibility of implementation and the effectiveness of the methodology.

We are convinced that we have a solid proposal, sophisticated enough to achieve the literacy goal and flexible enough to adapt to the contexts we target; it responds to the needs of our beneficiaries and their families. However, we face the challenge of designing more effective tools for measuring the program's results and impact.

Advocacy: Associated with this barrier, we aim to make the need to work on literacy visible. Having evidence will allow us to showcase our experience and influence public policies to prioritize literacy in educational objectives, as well as promote territorial expansion.

National Statistics indicate that at a lower socioeconomic level, the level of literacy increases. In the lower socioeconomic levels families have greater difficulties in sustaining schooling due to dynamics specific to the context such as the precarious neighborhood infrastructure; lack of access to school materials, clothing and food; lower educational level of parents; deficit in access to reading material; dynamics of family organization and care; domestic abuse and violence; among others. Likewise, in these contexts public educational management is most deteriorated.

First ABC positively impacts the existing community educational support strategies, such as school support, offering methodology and predictability so that results can be achieved more effectively in these spaces. Likewise, community schools benefit by receiving more prepared and motivated students, thus improving the quality of learning in the classroom. Adult literacy mentors and community social leaders who are trained through the method are also beneficiaries, appropriating an educational tool to carry out literacy in literacy centers. Finally, it contributes to the formation of more qualified citizens, promoting sustainable development of society as a whole.

First ABC has been implemented as a test during the second half of 2023 in 40 community centers located in peripheral neighborhoods of the City of Paraná, Province of Entre Ríos. In this initial phase, the adaptation of the literacy method in the territory was tested in collaboration with community leaders, the training process for adult literacy mentors involved 100 volunteers, and we focused on the adaptation of the manuals as a learning tool for 625 children between 5 and 12 years old. As a result, positive appreciation was obtained from families and referents, as well as the effectiveness of the methodology in achieving the objectives of teaching children to read, write and understand texts.

To measure the results and impact, two tools were used: an initial and final diagnostic evaluation for the children, and a satisfaction survey for adult literacy teachers and community leaders. However, the implementation of these methodologies faced difficulties in being carried out and systematized, so unfortunately there is no evidence base for the work carried out in 2023. In this first stage, territorial management and the adaptation of the manuals, on which, thanks to this implementation, the necessary corrections could be made.

Starting in 2024 and with previous experience, Hacemos proposed to carry out the first adjusted pilot test in four provinces with 500 children between 5 and 12 years old. To improve the effectiveness of measuring results, diagnostic evaluations were redesigned, a rubric was created to facilitate the interpretation of results, specific virtual training for the implementation of evaluations was incorporated, and a dashboard of impact indicators is being developed .

In this pilot stage, community spaces were selected to establish literacy centers: 18 in the Province of Entre Ríos, 1 in the Province of Santa Cruz, 6 in the Province of Buenos Aires and 3 in the Province of Misiones. For all of these centers, the training process for adult literacy teachers has already been completed.

As an organization operating its pilot model with a high demand for growth (we are receiving volunteers and community centers applying to implement the program across Argentina every single day), we are at an urgent time to strengthen and organize methodically the following aspects before growing:

-Reviewing the children's evaluations: In this pilot stage we will test an evaluation system at the end of each textbook. Each of the textbooks is related to reading and writing achievements. Based on these, we developed a rubric so that literacy teachers can interpret the results and then systematize and evaluate them. This entire process requires urgent review.

-Train literacy mentors: We need to train mentors to properly carry out the process of evaluating children. Both the construction of the baseline through the diagnostic evaluation, as well as in the successive evaluations, interpretation and uploading of results.

-Qualitative information: due to the nature of the solution, it is extremely important that we complement quantitative data with qualitative information. We need to incorporate semi-structured interviews, life stories and witness cases of solutions, innovations, difficulties and challenges that arise in each of the cases.

-Improve technology: we need to strengthen the technology for recording and systematizing results. We thought it would be useful to develop an app for the different literacy spaces and for access to all literacy educators. In it, we could have an area of exchange that allows creating a collaborative space between communities.

-New technology: Likewise, we would like at some point to be able to incorporate technology that allows us to evaluate the development of orality in children after the program.

-Impact Analysis: Finally, we would like to conduct an impact evaluation of the program upon reaching a base of 1,500 children.

Considering the primary objective of achieving literacy in children aged 5 to 12, how accurate are the indicators identified to define the effectiveness of the First ABC program?

Based on the construction of innovative variables, what are the key elements of the learning process that contribute to the success or failure of the program and which are fundamental for replicability?

Knowing it is a program that is developed extracurricularly, how could the program contribute to school performance and what could be a proposal for joint work with schools to produce complementary data that strengthen educational trajectories?

Selection of key effectiveness indicators: we need technical assistance to define the effectiveness of the First ABC program, and we would first need to make sure that the indicators we selected really allow us to know the degree of effectiveness of the program to establish a correlation between them and the acquisition of reading and writing skills. 

Key Elements Report: conceptualize the variables that make First ABC program distinctive and innovative to analyze its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for replicability of our solution.

Among them: characterize the target population; characterize community organizations; characterize the physical infrastructure and intangible conditions of the classroom space within the framework of extracurricular spaces; segment literacy teachers based on trajectories and motivations for participation; evaluate the periodicity and deadlines of the program.

Strategy for linking literacy data with school performance: design an information management proposal that allows linking the results of the literacy process of the First ABC program with the performance of children in the school environment.

Furthermore, as a specific objective we expect to achieve by engaging in LEAP we need to Provide a measurable methodology for First ABC that includes the following Measurement of objectives and results:

1. Number of children literate.

• Initial diagnostic evaluation.

• Diagnostic evaluation after implementing the "Leo, leo, qué lees? 1" Manual.

  • Writing of the name.

  • Writing the name of animals.

  • Reading words with images.

  • Reading story titles.

  • Word separation.

  • Reading story titles and texts.

  • Writing and spelling of a dictated text.

  • Uppercase letters of a dictated text.

  • Reading and comprehension of a text.

Additionally, evaluations will be carried out after the implementation of the "Leo, leo, qué lees? 2" and "Leo, leo, qué lees? 3" Manuals, as well as measuring:

1. Amount of literacy communities reached.

   1. Record and characterization form of the community organization.

   2. Evaluation of literacy spaces at the end of the program.

2. Number of volunteers trained as adult literacy teachers.

   1. Satisfaction survey of the training process.

      1. Reflection for Referees. Literacy Training Course

   2. Monthly Zoom follow-up meetings with literacy teachers during the program.

3. Number of citizens involved in the literacy proposal.

As a result of our work together and the support of Leap in systematizing our First ABC program, we are planning to dedicate the 3 subsequent months to prepare a manual of effectiveness indicators that contains: 

-The basis for measuring results and impact of the program.

-A comprehensive diagram of the evaluation procedure.

-An organizational structure with those responsible and roles of all the people involved in the systematization process.

-A clear definition of indicators.

-Rubrics for the interpretation of results.

-Regular uploading systematization deadlines.

-Reporting and monitoring methods for each person involved in the process.

-During the same time, we are planning to train literacy educators in the results evaluation process, which we expect will require a long time given the diverse backgrounds and digital literacy of volunteers.

-Also, we need to strengthen the skills and operational capabilities of the monitoring and follow-up team.

-We will elaborate e a proposal to improve the technology for data collection and systematization.

-We have to design the index and contents to be developed for the report on key elements of the Program.

-As a long but necessary shot, we would like to work with the Ministries of Education of the provinces we are working at to survey representatives of the educational system so that they can offer us their perspective on how we could explore the relationship between literacy and school performance.

-We will hold meetings with directors and teachers from schools close to the literacy spaces and inquire about opportunities for joint work.

For the organization, we hope that the result of these 12 weeks of LEAP Project will strengthen and train the team that will be enriched by the exchange.

Furthermore, we expect to improve the management of indicators and presentation of results which will allows us to better position ourselves as an organization within the ecosystem of interests/stakeholders.

Hopefully, it will also give us the strengths to attract new private and institutional donors to grow as an organization, obtaining resources to strengthen the team, technology and communication with the territories.

We hope it will provide our organization with greater visibility to be able to implement many more literacy training communities.

For the solution, we expect that a system for measuring results and impact is established, that information is obtained that is useful to make adjustments and continuous improvement of the program in pursuit of its effectiveness and that opportunities for replicability and scalability increase.

We expect that, based on evidence, new actions can be designed to strengthen children's education.

OUR LONGER TERM VISION

In the future, we would like to develop technology that uses artificial intelligence to help us assess children's oral and communication skills.

The First ABC Program is designed to be implemented in different provinces and municipalities of the country, where distances are extensive and where technology plays a crucial role in both implementation and monitoring and evaluation of results.

Adult literacy training is conducted synchronously through the Zoom platform, an instrument that has not generated any difficulties as volunteers and members of community organizations have been able to attend and participate without major issues. All training sessions are recorded for asynchronic use. Communication with territorial teams and literacy educators is done via WhatsApp, and follow-up meetings are regularly coordinated via Zoom.

Diagnostic assessments of children are conducted in physical format; educators interpret the results according to a rubric provided by the program and upload them to Excel templates, which are then sent by email to the monitoring and follow-up team at Hacemos.

Based on this proposed solution, we would like to receive advice on designing a results platform that allows us to produce evidence at each point where the program is implemented. We aim to incorporate technology to overcome the geographical distances separating us from each literacy training community, enabling us to generate real-time information and achieve better impact and outcome measurement.

We also want it to facilitate an exchange between community organizations and literacy educators, thus creating a literacy community in out-of-school contexts. Additionally, we would like this advisory opportunity to allow us to continuously evaluate the methodology to make improvements and adapt it to different geographical contexts.