Sponsor's update from Tiquipaya, Bolivia

Child sponsorship update from the SOS Children's Village Tiquipaya, Bolivia from Winter 2008.

Dear sponsors,

Year 2008 has been kind of complicated in our country; however, those difficulties are lived every day within the Organisation with tranquility, prevision and a good integration and acceptation of the Community. Thanks to your support and trust, the Programmes of SOS Children Bolivia continue a stable development, which is a contribution in the life of 13,500 beneficiaries this year, from which, more than 1,400 live in a SOS Children’s Village.

Again, we want to share with you some news about the daily life of SOS Children’s Villages Tiquipaya, but first, we thank you for your support, generosity, nice details and interest you’ve demonstrated during this year for the children and adolescents of the families in the Village.

Year 2008 brought a significant increment of the infantile population in the community. Now, they are 122 children and adolescents who are part of 14 families. The opening of the last house was in July and 8 children are part of this family; the youngest one is 3 years old and the oldest one is 13 years old. This family is formed by two groups of biological siblings who are orphans of father and mother.

The activities of the children and adolescents within the village are part of the DIN Programme (Child’s Integral Development), which has now important changes in its structure. The programme promotes the support and participation of the mother regarding the acquisition of the competences needed for the development of her children. The topics of the work are values, family, sexual education, children’s rights, resilience, problems resolution, communicative skills and self-esteem. This year we emphasised the participation of the younger children in the decisions that concern them. With the adolescents, we are still working in the Vocational Orientation and other topics of their interest such as reproductive health, emotions and identity.

The socio-political situation of our country affected the normal development o the school activities; therefore, the school year will be over by the end of this year. The children and adolescents will be on vacations with some delay and it will be difficult for them to travel and spend some time with their biological families before the next year, when the school year will start again.

Regarding sport activities, we want to tell you that Ana Rosa, a 14 year old adolescent, got the first place in the Third Inter-Departmental Student of Bolivia Marathon, which was organised by the Municipality of Tiquipaya. Ana Rosa is always participating in any sport activity and this is the third year in a row that she arrives among the first places, this time, she was the winner and her siblings, the Village and the external community were happy to have her as their champion.

Twenty two youths from 16 to 20 years old are in the profesisonalisation stage; they study at school and work at the same time. Two youths are going through some difficulties that affect negatively in their professional formation, but they have psychological support. Other youths show a successful profile in their professional formation; for instance, Veronica, a 16 year old girl, is an outstanding student in her technical formation and at school and she is recognised positively and gets good labor reports.

Fifteen youths between 20 and 23 years old are in the independisation process. Most of them finished their technical careers and found a job related to their study area. We are motivating them during these last months so they start a university career or their own business the next year. For this, we have a micro-enterprise program through which they can receive a loan to start their own business in the area they do the best at. For instance, Jesus opened a car mechanic workshop and he gets incomes which allow him to pay the loan back.

By being a big community, there is no year when we don’t have a wedding. This last semester, Juan got married; he’s 25 years old and he’s the son of a SOS mother who already has seven married children. This mother also has 11 grandchildren; the youngest one is 3 months old. This mother comments: “on Sundays, my house becomes small”. Her family became bigger thanks to the weddings and the arrival of grandchildren.

The SOS mothers of the community work in the strengthening of their families mainly through the participation of the children and adolescents in the family decisions. They are also attending to computing courses so they can help their children with their homework and other activities which involve the use of the computer and especially Internet.

To convince them to take those courses was hard, especially the older mothers; therefore, it’s a slow but secure process so they can be updated regarding technology.

This year, we had more labour steadiness of aunts. To guarantee their staying is still a weak fact in the organisation. In the next months, an investigation about the aunts’ labour unsteadiness will be carried out and the results will allow us to work on those weak facts and to overcome this difficulty.

Entrepreneur Education Programme

Maybe, it’s novel and rare to listen about the “Entrepreneur Education Programme”. With plenty satisfaction, we can say that there are substantial changes in the Educative Programmes of SOS Children Bolivia. This programme implies that the Educative Units and the Technical Formation Centres are now part of one educative programme under the Entrepreneurism approach.

The educative programmes work now in alliance with the municipalities where we are present physically. Last year, we started a combined process with the municipal authorities in order to identify what technical formation actions the municipality will require according to its development vision. Therefore, the careers that we offer now are an answer to the community’s demand: Transformation of handmade milky derived products, Agents in community eco-tourism and Computing Operators. In October we had a new career: Technician in Civil Constructions.

Sixty are now in our classrooms. The new participants are youths who couldn’t fulfill their formal education process and quit it, in general, because of their need of contributing economically to their families. These youths use to enter the labor market with few labour competences and limited alternatives. All the participants are people of low incomes so the programme supports them economically by giving them a bond for bus fares and food in order to guarantee their regular attendance to the programmed activities. The young mothers receive a greater economical support besides the support for their children to attend a Day Care Centre.

The Entrepreneur approach doesn’t look only for the students to be good employees, but also to be job generators. We want to support these youths for them to dream and to transform their dreams into reality and to be real agents of change by supporting them so they can become social and managerial entrepreneur people.

This change also meant that the Productive Units that were the base for the technical formation activities before are now units that can generate economical incomes for the running of the Entrepreneur Education Programme.

Family Strengthening Programme

The Family Strengthening Programme’s objective is to contribute to the decrease of the infantile abandon in the city periphery neighborhoods and communities through the protection and integral assistance of most needy children under 6. It works in unfavorable neighborhoods and communities under two modalities: Social Centre and Community Houses.

The Social Centre is a programme of SOS Children that assists 165 children between 6 months and 9 years old from 80 families in risk situation. It gives permanent technical support for the assistance of children, it follows the development of the activities and results and supports directly through programmes for women, families and communities.

Currently, the achieved covering is 1.465 children, from which 165 attend the Social Centre and 1.300 attend the Community Houses distributed in two geographical areas considered in high social risk according to the Poverty Map of the Municipality.

The Community Houses are spaces in the community where we offer protection and integral assistance to children under 6. The physical spaces are given for some time under a community covenant for the operation of the program. In some cases, the community and organised groups of parents work for their qualification.

In order to get continuity, during this year, we’ve worked with special attention in actions addressed to sensitise the population of the communities and their authorities and directives about the importance of strengthening the families on the protection and assistance of children. The objective is to get community co-responsibility and continuity in the integral assistance to children and families in vulnerability situation. From these actions, we could sensitise the Territorial Organisations, which as part of their responsibility, facilitate infrastructures, make a solidary social control and support economically to improve the quality of the services.

We are active members of the principal local nets of defense of children, women and families’ rights in order to earn ourselves a space and to participate actively in local decisions regarding rights. Our projections are addressed to improve the intra-family relationships with tools that strengthen the bonds and to work along with the directives of the communities to guarantee the continuity of the assistance in the intervention areas.

Dear sponsors, this is the general information during this year about the development of SOS Children’s Villages Tiquipaya and the Entrepreneur Education Programme and the Social Centre. We hope these lines allowed you to imagine the programs you support and which look for the development of children and adolescents from Tiquipaya Community. Finally, we send you greetings from the children, adolescents and all the collaborators who work in the Community of Tiquipaya.

Paloma Delaine R.
Sponsorship Advisor
Children’s Villages SOS Bolivia