Benposta School: Empowering Children and Adolescents Affected by Colombian Armed Conflict

Bogotá, Sep 23 (EFE).- In the Eastern Hills of Bogotá there is a small place where children and adolescents affected by the Colombian armed conflict come to have a voice and vote, to escape the spiral of violence that affects some regions of the country. , such as Catatumbo, Arauca or Guaviare.

That is the Benposta School, which in the words of its director, José Luis Campo, aims to “generate spaces of security where boys and girls, regardless of their social status or origin, can build their life project with guarantees.”

“In this framework, one of the situations that most affects is the problems that the regions are experiencing and the risks in regions such as Catatumbo, Arauca and Guaviare due to different logics, among them the historical abandonment of the State where boys and girls are subjected to risk situations that prevent them from dreaming, that prevent them from developing their life goals,” Campo adds to EFE.

In the school facilities there are rooms, a theater, many animals and dozens of children who develop their life projects there, since the objective, according to the director, is for them to be in an environment “that recognizes them as subjects.”

For that reason “they are the protagonists of their own history: there is a structure that is not only operational, self-government means giving up power, they are the ones who organize and decide,” he says.

Essential support

In this context, the Benposta school has received key support that has allowed it to grow and provide better living conditions to its students, that of the Spanish NGO Mano a Mano, founded in 1994 thanks to the initiative of Iberia employees who intended to take advantage the airline’s resources to send humanitarian aid to developing countries.

In a visit this Saturday, the NGO had the support of one of its volunteers, the actress Andrea Guasch, who donated part of the prize she obtained for winning a gala of the television program “Your face sounds to me” for Mano’s work. by hand with Benposta.

“One of the nice things about the program is that when you win you can donate money. I had no doubt that I should donate to Mano a Mano,” the singer also tells EFE.

Guasch adds: “They offered me several places to donate and when they told me about Benposta, my tears fell and I said how nice that this exists, a place where so many kids are taken care of and they also take care of each other and everyone is learning.”

For Guasch, this work and being able to visit Bogotá with his colleague Elena Martínez, also involved in the initiative, is important because it gives visibility to projects that help people who are going through such difficult times.

suitcases of dreams

Another of the project’s allies is precisely Iberia, which is in charge of bringing the donations that Mano a Mano makes to places like Colombia, such as 40 computers that the Benposta children have been using for some time.

“In this case there are 40 computers, we work very closely with Mano a Mano, an NGO that has been working with Iberia for many years. What we do with them, and thanks to their collaboration, is bring material on our planes that is necessary in places like Benposta,” Iberia’s corporate director, Juan Cierco, told EFE.

The executive added that “whatever they need and ask us for, we bring it directly through the planes so that they can then work with that material.”

That is why he recalled that in Madrid there are “dozens of boxes of books that we want to bring”, something that they have not yet fulfilled because “due to a bureaucratic issue, we have to fill out some paperwork, more than necessary.”

“From here I call for the bureaucratic process to be accelerated,” said Cierco, and concluded by valuing the airline’s commitment to “innovation and technology” with these initiatives.