Universidad Santo Tomás, Department of Social Work
Professors and students at the Universidad Santo Tomás have fomented and fortified a network of community NGOs in a poor neighborhood north of Santiago, Chile. 440 students and several dozen professors do internships and reseach in the community, and all theses relate to the programs, many of which work with street kids or at risk children.
Chile, the university believes, is a country with paradoxical policies toward children. On the one hand, it has signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and thus sees children as subjects and actors. However, Chilean law still sees children as “minors,” objects of charity or punishment. State run shelters are highly asistencialista (help-ist, allowing little autonomy for kids), as are shelters run by the police, where street kids are first imprisoned and then taught to be cops. The constitution of 1980, imposed by Agusto Pinochet, makes it almost impossible to change these laws.
The university tries to create and promote a different model. Education in the program is highly anti-asistencialista, promoting self-sufficiency and rejecting dependence; talking with the students, one notes the dramatic difference between their attitude and that of the majority of Chileans. “Science” is the key word to deconstruct this charity mentality. Perhaps more significantly, as one student said, “we don’t have the resources to be asistencialista. Without money, people have to be in charge of their own lives.” Professors are now trying to bring this education to family judges.
The university assists many programs, four of which work with street kids. Click to see their pages.
- Ciudad Educativa
- Creando Expectativas
- Genesis
- Escuela del Lenguage
Universidad Santo Tomás
Vergara 317 (esq. Grajales), tercer piso
Centro, Santiago, Chile
Malvina Ponce de León
562 787 1606
mpleon@ust.cl
