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Taller de Vida (Life Workshop)
No one knows how many refugees have fled to Bogotá in the last decade, but the number could be as high as a million. Every day the civil war drives more families to the city, and their children -- who are unprepared for urban life and urban schools -- often end up working or living on the street. All suffer the scars of the war, and few know how to live with 8 million other people in Bogotá.
Taller de Vida was founded in 1993 to advocate for the rights of refugees (in Colombia, refugees are called “desplazados” (“displaced persons”) because they never crossed a national border and are thus not, by United Nations standards, refugees.). At that time, these refugees were often community leaders expelled from their communities by the autodefensas (right wing guerrillas, affiliated with the military) -- these intellectual refugees now run the Taller. Though the program intended to work with mothers, when mom arrived with her kids, the Taller had to figure out what to do with young people.
Over the last decade, Taller de Vida’s clients have changed dramatically. Today refugees are not community leaders, not even leftists -- the autodefensas and the guerrillas are expelling everyone from the countryside. Many refugees are black, a shock in this white and often snobby city.
Taller de Vida runs several projects to include refugee kids in the life of the city, to defend their human rights, to improve the quality of their lives, and to raise their political consciousness.
- Schools. Most campesino children haven’t been to school much, and others are at the wrong age for their grade. Almost none understand how to get around the city, and all suffer exclusion, because of their race, accent, background, and refugee status.
In collaboration with Amnesty International, Taller de Vida created a research and inclusion program. They learned why refugee kids dropped out and why teachers failed to teach them. With this information, Taller de Vida began to offer remedial education to students and to teach teachers about refugees. Several years later no one could say that public schools are a paradise for refugee kids, but they are certainly better.
Many teachers don’t understand Colombian politics or the civil war, so they are confused by the fact that they now have black students in their classes. Taller de Vida teaches about black and campesino culture and shows how teachers can encourage these children to participate. The Taller also trains teachers to control the social dynamics of the classroom, so that other students don’t bully their refugee peers. Later, Taller staff accompany the teacher in her classroom, showing how to take advantage of refugee kids’ knowledge. In a class on biology, for example, a campesina girl will be able to explain about farm animals, or about steam ecology. In a class on politics, the experience of someone who has seen the war is invaluable.
Finally, Taller de Vida validates teachers’ work. Research has shown that many teachers pick on refugee kids because of exhaustion and low self-esteem, so Taller makes them feel good about themselves and their work.
- Workshops. Violence and war attempt to negate humanity, but art revives it. Taller de Vida runs workshops on dance, theater, and music in order to recuperate campesino and afro-colombian cultures -- and also to teach Bogotanos about the wealth and diversity of campesino culture. “One good result of the damned war,” says the director of Taller de Vida, “is that it mixes once segregated groups, allowing them to learn from each other.”
Unfortunately, this mixing has caused huge conflicts in Bogotá. Bogotanos, who are often excessively polite, don’t know how to cope when black refugees turn their music up loud. Clothes, habits, and even posture have generated mutual hatred, all because bogotanos and refugees don’t understand each other. These workshops teach people how to live together, because the performance of art teaches tolerance and respect for difference.
Careful research has proved that the boys and girls who participate in these workshops, in spite of what they suffered in the war, have better motor skills, are better public speakers, and better understand their rights, than do other children their age.
- Medicine and Health. Campesino families don’t understand nutrition in a big city. The food is different and very expensive, and there is no wood for the stove. In the house where kids attend workshops (in Usme, a refugee neighborhood), the children’s mothers come to cook lunch for everyone. Everyone learns from, and teaches, everyone else. Women from Boyocá (a cold, high province) teach how to cook potatoes, while women from hot climates teach about plantains and fruit. With the help of a nutritionist, they cook good food and learn how to prepare nutritious meals at home.
- Youth activism and research: All of the armed groups in Colombia (the FARC, the ELN, the autodefensas, the drug lords, the army, and common gangs) recruit members in poor neighborhoods, but a group of teenagers from Taller de Vida works against them. These “Youth social researchers” take videos and photos and study their neighborhoods, then broadcast their findings on a monthly TV show. The researchers document human rights violations (violence, press gangs, threats, “social cleansing,” kidnapping), but they also film what’s good about their communities, like the strength of campesino traditions, and they interview people with the courage to work for peace.
The project also revives refugees’ identities. One boy who came from Chocó (on the Pacific coast) said, “Before I came to Bogotá, I didn’t know I was black. But I came, and people hated me because I was back. But when I take photos, I can teach everyone how beautiful my culture is.”
The impact of the program is stunning. Several years ago, refugee communities like Soacha and Usme looked at black youth with fear and loathing -- in the social imaginary, they were the font of all evil. Today, however, black youth are seen as community leaders and role models for other kids. When these kids built a park in Soacha, local mothers began to tell their children, “Look at that! But you know, we could do it, too.”
Kids in the Youth Researchers program also wrote and star in a play, “The world is out of joint,” about their experiences in the war. It relates the horrors that they have lived, but, in good Colombian style, it’s a comedy.
- Youth Peacemakers. Collaborating with NGOs in other countries at war, Taller de Vida coordinates a group of young men and women who mediate conflicts. They negotiate peace agreements between local gangs and they go to schools to teach about peace and justice.
Because many NGOs have asked Shine a light to find ways to work in violent contexts, we asked Taller de Vida for advice. Director Haidy Duque offered several ideas
- Don’t think of the kids as victims or perpetrators of violence, even though they are. Think of them as bearers of resources. The challenge is to make those resources into strengths.
- Kids who are respected in their communities don’t join gangs. You have to open a space in which kids can become activists and make a difference, then you have to teach the community (and the institution!) about the difference the kids make.
- Value diversity! Diverse children have to do more than tolerate each other: they must learn from and love difference.
- Teach kids about politics. When the understand injustice and violence, they’ll know how to work against it.
Shine a Light has collaborated or is collaborating with Taller de Vida on several projects:
- The School out of Place
- Jiménez de Quesada
Taller de Vida
Stella Duque, Directora
understanding social services for street kids in Latin America
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