Newsletter, December 2022

Ph: Andrés Sanín

The Conference Cases for Culture was held on December 2 and 3 at DRCLAS, Harvard University. More than 30 policy makers, artists and academics participated in this intense exchange of ideas and experiences with the aim of weaving collaborative networks to create impact on public policy through arts.

Salvador del Solar pointed out the importance of highlighting the value of daily cooking in his presentation “Something Cooking in Perú”.

“Measure Up” with James Robinson and José Falconi. Ph: Andrés Sanín

Each intervention explored the social and economic advances that art enables, encouraging us to write more business school type cases that combine quantitative and qualitative data that can guide policy decisions.

The video recording of all the panels will be available soon.
Recap
Full Program And Bios

Victor Meseguer reports on the V Simposio Internacional – El papel de los profesores en la investigación (The role of professors in research) organized by UNICARIBE. Full article

Pre-Texts Updates

Pre-Texts at Metcalf Elementary School in Holyoke

“The kids had multiple opportunities to interact with the text… from interpreting paragraphs with movement to today’s activity of recreating a paragraph using legos with the purpose of going around as a group and infer what paragraph the groups had made, all the time referring back to the text and reading the paragraphs.  All of the students were using the Spanish vocabulary consistently and independently throughout the whole lesson and you had a 100% student engagement and discussion about the text.”, said Militza Semidei,  Literacy Coach at Metcalf Elementary School in Holyoke about the work our new trainee Olatz Etxebarria.

Botanical Expeditions with Comedor Siempre Carrillo

We congratulate our new facilitators from the Universidad Mayor in Santiago, Chile. They are beneficiaries of the first cohort who were trained by Jose Falconi in May 2022.  By now, the original trainees have implemented the protocol in courses on Ethics and Social Responsibility, Oral and Strategic Communication (for the Musical Arts and English Pedagogy for Elementary and Secondary Education careers) and Nursing Management, covering a total of 277 students from different careers in the Santiago and Temuco regions. Read more about this experience here.

Fratelli Tutti: Equity is Built 

“The experience of sharing and listening attentively to very different points of view, even with the initial desire to be equitable, requires its own process, since equity is built, not intuited in a universalist way”, said Juan Maquieyra, Executive Director of Fratelli Tutti Political School about the training workshop lead by Doris Sommer during December 2022 ” Read more here

Kenya Ends the Year with a New Cohort of Teacher Facilitators

Our partner, Shamiri Institute, a youth mental health organization based in Nairobi, Kenya has been implementing Pre-Texts with students and teachers alike. The 7,8 and 9 December, the Shamiri team led a Pre-Texts Facilitator Workshop at SHOFCO Kibera School for Girls. Over 75 teachers participated and completed the 3 day workshop. The teachers went through various sessions and explored texts in Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Literature. During the art making activity, the teachers expressed themselves in song and dance, poems, drama, choral verses and even did a TV news show presentation. A memorable experience for the teachers and the facilitators.

“Our teachers indeed learnt, had fun and were  fully engaged.” Hecky Odera, SHOFCO Education Director. Visit page

The Shamiri Institute will be hosting a series of free virtual Pre-Texts  workshops starting on 16th Jan 2023 and would love to invite interested teachers to participate. Registrations are ongoing and teachers are encouraged to express interest via email (team@shamiri.institute or kinyua@shamiri.institute). Registrations close early January 2023. More

 Futebol Viral Scores Against Hunger

On December 17 and 18, our Brazilian colleagues from Futebol Viral organized Christmas celebrations in the Jardin Amazonas neighborhoods and at the Arena R3 Escola de Futebol Rondinelli do Flamengo where  a special edition of “Fome OUT – A Base vem Forte” was held with the participation of students, former students and current players of football riopardense and the region up to age of 12 years, along with aeveral players from São José do Rio Pardo