Fe y Alegría: Lessons for Educational Innovation in Vulnerable Communities

Its purpose is to create better opportunities for children and young people with limited resources to attend school. It is one of the organizations Impactus Ventures has built synergies with to accelerate its social impact.

Almost 12 million girls, boys and teenagers in Latin America and the Caribbean between seven and 18 years old do not have access to fair, quality education, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). This population faces unequal opportunities to attend school because of factors such as poverty, social and cultural barriers, discrimination and a lack of educational infrastructure.

This problem is worse in marginalized areas, where millions of families live in poverty, keeping their children from attending school. “In these families, children and young people often become the source of income to survive, and then they drop out of school,” says Fabiola Garcera, National Deputy Director of Early Childhood at Fe y Alegría Colombia.

To address school dropout and provide better education opportunities, for 45 years Fe y Alegría has run different projects, educational programs, innovations and technologies to provide free, quality education to girls, boys and teenagers (and their families as well) in vulnerable communities around the world.

It is an international federation for education and social promotion with a presence in more than 22 countries in Latin America, Europe and Africa. Since its founding in 1955, it has benefited more than 900 thousand students with limited resources and 40 thousand workers, including teachers, educators and administrative staff.

Among the countries where the federation operates is Colombia. There, Fe y Alegría works as an education association that teaches preschool, primary, secondary and high school children and young people through a network of its own schools with an educational model based on popular education.

In 2021 alone, Fe y Alegría reached 162 thousand Colombian girls, boys and teenagers, and during 2022 it has reached 10 thousand children in the early childhood segment.

Unequal educational opportunities

The need of Colombia’s most vulnerable communities for quality, easily accessible education is not the only problem. The reality is that curricula and teaching and learning processes are standardized, and are not always suited to the context in which vulnerable communities live.

On this point, Garcera explains that Latin American countries have education systems that depend on the global economy. That is, they are measured against international parameters set by organizations such as the World Bank, and this pushes countries toward mass education delivered equally to everyone with programs that must be followed in all schools.

“We learned that education must be contextualized, regardless of whether there is a general curriculum, an education law or general parameters. Education must adapt to the reality of the context, of the children and even of their families,” says Garcera.

There is a reason for this: the vulnerable situation they live in. To understand it a little better, imagine the following scenario: how does a child learn if they arrive at the classroom hungry, if they speak an Indigenous language, if there are family problems at home, or they suffer violence, abuse or any other situation that can complicate their development?

Garcera explains that during the Covid-19 contingency, these kinds of situations deepened, and together with the lack of social interaction, they affected children’s learning and emotional development. “These kinds of situations are not considered in general education programs, and that is where Fe y Alegría steps in by contextualizing the school,” adds Garcera.

Curbing educational lag with innovation and technology

So how has this association innovated in education, and what makes its teaching model different from the traditional education system? Garcera believes the biggest innovation Fe y Alegría has developed is adapting the educational model to the community’s needs.

“We reorganize the curricula and subjects set by the traditional education system, so that we work by learning environments, and areas are linked to each other with activities adapted to the reality of vulnerable communities,” says Garcera.

This year, with the premise of innovating to increase social impact, Fe y Alegría Colombia joined the Childtech Challenge 2022 as an implementation partner.

Thanks to this, and for the next 10 months, the Association is working hand in hand with Storybook, the winning startup in the Overall and Socio-emotional Development category, giving families who attend its kindergartens access to an app that combines bedtime stories with infant massage to improve their children’s sleep, and to strengthen the bond between parents and children through touch.

In this sense, technology has become a support tool for parents, teachers, students, schools and government to drive the overall development of girls, boys and young people. “For us, technology is a means that complements education. There must be a strong educational proposal as a base, where technology is a reinforcement,” says Garcera.

They have also made a commitment to training educators in its use: “During the pandemic it became clear that educators were also technologically illiterate, and we had to train them in the use of information technologies. We have qualification programs for educators in pedagogical and technological tools,” says Garcera.

Impact on the community

This is how Fe y Alegría provides better education opportunities to girls and boys in vulnerable situations in Colombia, through innovation and the use of technology in the education system.

Garcera says that as a federation, Fe y Alegría’s focus is on delivering 12 work initiatives aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to transform the education and the future of millions of girls, boys and young people.

“What we are doing is using education as a means to reach communities and bring about social transformation through the school or educational projects. The goal is to transform the social realities of these communities so they have a better future,” says Garcera.

Just as Fe y Alegría has worked hand in hand with Impactus Ventures through the Childtech Challenge, you can also take your organization to the next level. If you lead a nonprofit organization and want to become a high-impact innovative leader, we invite you to be part of the first edition of Fellowship Impactus, a community of people who are solving social or environmental problems that affect children and young people in Latin America.

Apply here until October 10 and take your organization to the next level.