A la Rueda Rueda Foundation turns recreation into education in Colombia
Creative leisure time and healthy sports habits to keep children and young people away from the dangers of the streets
Current Project
The city of Montería is located in one of the areas that has been hardest hit by the violence in Colombia. The A la Rueda Rueda Foundation has been working in the southern zone of the city for six years to offer children and teens from the most vulnerable neighborhoods the chance to practice different activities in their free time, such as art and sport, the aim being to strengthen their personal development and protect them from the numerous dangers they face in their leisure time due to the complex nature of the environment in which they live.
As a result of the success of its interventions, in 2017 the Foundation decided to design a formal educational strategy based on creative recreation. This model is based on constructivism, taking a student-oriented approach which uses their prior knowledge as the basis on which to build new knowledge. The belief is that if this new knowledge is strongly associated with previous knowledge it helps with its retention, as it is stored in the long-term memory. It also recognizes that each student has individual cultural characteristics and a different life experience which should be taken into consideration when it comes to learning. The belief is that cognitive resources and the teaching structure are honed with each new learning session, so students progressively learn faster and better.
Fundación MAPFRE supports this project to contribute to the comprehensive development of children and teens from the most vulnerable communities, strengthening their different skills, abilities and knowledge, with an emphasis on creativity, as a strategy to guarantee the exercise of their rights and to reinforce their interests and talents in constructing their individual life project.