More or less 3 month ago I arrived in Bogota/Colombia and i am working now in my projekt called "Residencias 10 de Mayo", for 2 month. Until now i did a lot. The Residencias is a place where poor students from the university national (a very famous university) can live. They have an apartement for very less money, a computer-room, a library and other things. Also a kindergarden is included. Many students have children (also the teacher), so over the day the children are in the residencias. I already programmed an application with a database which includes all children and every important informations about them. This programm is already in use.

description Format Size download Video: Residencias and International Cultural Festival *.wma ca. 32 MB [download] [stream]

Everything began with our spanish-course in the residencias. All exchangees from the ICYE Colombia took part in that course...

...There were only a few people who already speak spanish, the others not. Gustavo from ICYE was the teacher.

Here are some impressions, pictures and events about my social work in the residencias... the home of many students:

"This residencias were foundet as a monument to all students ever who were fighting for the freedom of colombia"

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Not all students look like him :)... but anyway, this is ONE of them!

left: MY BOSS :) But he is pretty cool, although he has a lot of work as a director. right: The secretaries. They organize the invoices, and all the paper things

left: The women in the kichen provide the children and the people who work here with good food and drinks (Fruit-drinks), for FREE.

left: In the building you find a lot of pictures of the students right: the damaged part of the residencias, nobody lives there.

the library of the residencias. They can use it for free and is open between 4.00pm until 12.00 pm in the night...

International Cultural Festival:

The international Cultural Festival was a festival which should create more cultural feeling in the residencias. Therefore many foreigners, Indians and students were invited to come and cook some typical things and to interchange Souvenirs, playing songs or instruments or act something...
...and many countries took part in that event:

And for sure many countries more for example: Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Croatia, Estland...

The girls from switzland while they are preparing their flags and informations for the festival. Nice or not :) ?

Not only the stands should be prepared, also the food for the diner-part of the event should be prepared well..

so either the exchangeesprepare it directly in the residencias in the BIG kitchen...

or they prepare it one day/night before in their houses and bring it on the next morning to the event... like DANIEL and ME :) By the way, we cooked a peach cream the people loved it!

Then the event started at 11.00 am in the morning:

the business was good for us, we sold everything what we cooked!

the europeans showed scatches: They showed always differences between europe and colombia for example situationsin a bus,in a taxi in a park or a telephone conversations. The croatins and the Italiens also showed typical dances from their countries. Students from the university nacional presented a very good choroeographied dance and colombians from fontibon (a part of bogota in the south) presented something other :)

In the end we can say everything went very well. Some things had to be re-organized on time, but everything went good. It was really a lot of fun and was very interesting see and talk with people from different cultures.

30th birthday of the kindergarden

2 weeks later the kindergarden of the residencias celabrated the 30th birthday, therefore a small "party" was organized:

the childrens are from the students or from the teacher of the University Nacional de Colombia...

Also here a lot of people came to that event to see some of the children singing classical things...

But before everything started, everbody stood up to hear the national-hymn of colombia. After that the kids began singing..

Well, in the whole this was a part of my work and what i am doing here in my projekt. For sure there are a lot other things (for example programming a database for ALL children in the kindergarden with all informations or crating a movie club for the students which includes art-movies, documentaries or cultureal movies to buildung up the knowledge of the students OR another things is in few month to give the students English or German lessons for free)


Questions? Comments? Write a comment HERE!


13th november 2005, Bogota D.C