Colombia: Acra Mundial
Equipment for the creative education of children and young people of Acra Mundial
At the Fudación Acra Mundial, children, adolescents and young adults with disabilities can learn a variety of things. Here they can paint, model, craft, bake and work with wood. Next year, the institution needs to buy new burners for the oven to model with clay, which costs around 2,300 euros. They also need some spare parts for carpentry machines such as a lathe (3,000 euros) and a telescopic ram (1,000 euros).
The Fudación Acra Mundial also would like to use your WOW-Day-donations for general maintenance, care and improvement of the classrooms and school. These are, for example, repairs or the purchase of new necessary crafts, sports, gymnastics and painting utensils. For this, the institution needs about 3,500 € and everything together costs about 9,800 euros.
“Your donations enable us to carry out this work more easily and with less worry, as well as to create a generally more beautiful and pleasant workplace for students and teachers.
Our desire is to be able to accommodate more and more children, adolescents and adults, to expand our support and to offer this place of safety and acceptance to even more people. “
About the project:
The Fundación Arca Mundial is an institution for people with disabilities. It is located in Medellín, Colombia, and was founded in 1997. Today about 55 small children, children, adolescents and young adults aged from 18 months to 28 years visit and learn in the institution from Monday to Friday. Now there are six groups of about ten students each. In addition to the two children’s groups, there are two adult groups, a teenager and a carpenter group.
Acra Mundial is a place where people meet and build bridges between people here and a society, in which children and young people with special needs often experience rejection. With various creative, playful and movement-focused offers, the individual strengths of the children and adolescents are determined. The aim is to start with the strengths and to use them to face challenging situations in an easier and better way.
Here it plays a very important role that employees and visitors meet on an equal footing and create an encouraging space for exchange, trust, development and security. But also for conflict situations, to learn to face them openly in order to work out solutions together. A togetherness where everyone feels equally visible, heard and valued.
In addition to the learning opportunities, there are many celebration opportunities in the Fundacíon Arca Mundial. The festivities do not only show special moments in the flow of daily life, but also the great commitment of the employees. They often prepare birthday parties and other celebrations in their spare time, because it is important to them that. In addition to school or professional training, the students experience an environment in which their value as a person is recognized.
When the Colombian authorities decided to close the schools for people with disabilities and to integrate them into the general schools in 1997, a group of friends around the couple Juan Guillermo Restrepo Florez and Sandra Domínguez, decided to open a day care center for children, adolescents and adults with various disabilities. As schools often refused to provide special educational services, this project was created to close the gap and provide training to those who did not find a good educational service elsewhere. With the support of a foundation founded in 2000 and the Friends of Waldorf Education, it was possible to buy in a property in 2002.
Today, the building includes classrooms, a carpentry workshop, a weaving mill, a bakery, a kitchen and a courtyard. Every day, people from all income levels visit the Fundación Arca Mundial, but only a few of them can raise the full monthly contribution of about 185 euros, so that the continued existence of the Fundación Arca Mundial can only be secured by donations. The Colombian government supports the project, but does not provide any financial support.
Despite the great difficulties, the conviction and dedication of the team members are unbroken and they always plan the expansion and improvement of the facility to be independent sometime in the future.
