ICDP Colombia chairperson Carmen Lucia Andrade summarizes activities in Colombia:
Program activities/ICDP projects:
As far as our programme activities, below is a list of the projects executed during the year.
As chair, I was taking care of all the administrative requirements of our ICDP Colombia foundation, but I took a break from my roll as ICDP trainer. Nevertheless, I was able to supervise the training processes in different parts of the country; in Envigado, Antioquia, Boyacá and Santander.
Between April and June, several project proposals were sent, including to Villa de Leyva to work with community leaders, to the Santander Secretariat of Mental Health and to the University of Valle – but these applications were not accepted on the account of shortages in the budgets for 2023.
In Quindío, a project proposal was approved by the Guerrand Hermes Foundation for Peace, and it will be executed in 2024 – the ICDP program will be implemented with adolescent girls.
In Santander, we/ICDP Colombia Foundation, agreed with the Secretariat of Mental Health, for them to publish the ICDP material and to carry out the ICDP program in the province of Santander by training their psychologists and in exchange they agreed to deliver some copies of the newly published material to the foundation.
At the end of 2022, in Boyacá, ICDP trainer Luis Fernando López conducted virtual facilitator level workshops for 90 psychologists in the ICDP program “I am a person” and during the year 2023, he monitored their work. His monitoring work involved facilitators linked to the mental health secretariat in Boyacá and Santander.
In Boyacá, 23 facilitators operating in 23 municipalities implemented the program with 12 new families each, for a total of 345 families.
In the municipality of Venta Quemada, an ICDP trainer, called July Catherin, who has been working in ICDP since 2018, formed new groups of facilitators. They were selected from social services, kindergartens, as well as from health centres. After the initial training she was engaged in monitoring of the process. In addition, she supported the monitoring process in the Department of Boyacá and was involved in the evaluation of the work carried out with rural and urban communities.
She has also carried out an ICDP pilot project with teenagers, by applying the ICDP material that was especially adapted by ICDP El Salvador for working with adolescents. This pilot took place from August to November 2023.
In Antioquia, in July, the Mayor’s Office of the city of Envigado, invited us to apply to become implementors of the project called Strengthening Links for the Protection of Children and Adolescents. The purpose of this project was to promote the consolidation of family ties and the creation of positive environments for children, by using the ICDP program, aimed at parents and caregivers of children and adolescents. The project focused on using ICDP parenting guidelines to help enhance parents’ ability to express affection, love, and provide overall positive attention to children, to establish good family norms and positive discipline – and thus ultimately create protective, caring and safe environments for children to grow up in. Beneficiary population: The direct beneficiary population consisted of 30 adults, parents and/or caregivers, who received the full training cycle. An indirect impact is expected on family members. The University of Lasalle was chosen to execute the project, but as it was a methodology that they had not handled before, a specific trainingagreement was established between this institution and the ICDP foundation. The university used the ICDP materials, and the ICDP logo for certification. They hired ICDP trainer Carolina Montoy who effectively carried out this training during the period between August and October 2023.