By Maryam | SOLE Colombia Community Coordinator
During the last months, Lina, Eccediel and Robinson have been inviting other people from their community, to come and join the weekly SOLEs they're doing at Augusto's and Lina's place, two well known neighbours in Pisamal.
Pisamal is in the middle of beautiful mountains, where you can sit all day long contemplating the amazing landscape with a cup of coffee. In spite of the beauty that surrounds the people living in this amazing spot in Colombia, it is not an easy task to visit every single family living there, to tell them about the new SOLE (Self-Organized Learning Environment) they have started to build together with children and adults, and invite them to join the SOLE sessions.
Some months ago, many neighbours got togehter to celebrate and that was an important attempt to present the project to the community. For some of them it wasn't a new project, they already knew about SOLE from 2014, when Robinson, the first SOLE ambassador in Pisamal, started to invite people to get together and learn in groups using the Internet (when they had the first Internet kiosk at Robinson's place that closed some time later). For many others, it was the first time they heard about this project and this new learning opportunity.
Lina and Eccediel are both neighbours and know exactly the difficulties they have to spread the word in their community and that's why they started different strategies to catch people's interest. Having the only spot with Internet access is for sure a great oportunity to invite people to learn together and use the internet to have access to a wider world.
Lina, with the support of Eccediel and other neighbours, went to visit different families and created a weekly space to, no only do SOLE, but also to get together to watch a movie, and start different conversacions around diverse themes and Big Questions.
This strategy is becoming a great plan for children and adults to get together, learn and have fun. Now, more neighbours are motivated and asking Big Questions about different topics.
They also are planning other ways to save money for the SOLE Lab and pay for the Internet connection. Even if they know that there are some ressources coming from different donors, like SAP and all generous donations from you and other donors worldwide, as a community, they want to contribute with their own ressources. This shows the commitment they feel with their own learning process, with SOLE Colombia as an organization and with all other supporters who are putting their energy and ressources to give this amazing community an opportunity to learn and solve their own challenges.
All this activities are important before we start to build the SOLE Lab in the community. Before we, together with the neighbours, build any infrastructure, it is imoprtant for different community members to feel part of this project.
We are happy to share with you this news and invite you to learn more about this and other projects on The Playground in The Cloud. We also invite you to share with us any idea for finding more ressources for the SOLE Lab in Pisamal and other remote places all arround Colombia.
Thank you for your constant support and stay tuned for the coming news from Pisamal!
Best,
Sanjay, Maryam, Lina, Eccediel and all SOLE participants from Pisamal.
By Sanjay Fernandes and Maryam Tertel | Director and Coord. of the SOLE Colombia Community
By Robinson, Sanjay and Maryam | Neighbour from Pisamal, SOLE Colombia Team
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