Author: Natalia Trujillo Varela
The Mobile School is an opportunity to teach values and educate the most vulnerable children and empower them through knowledge and good living.
Arnoud Raskin, creator of the Mobile School methodology, is visiting Armenia these days to give support to the Weaving Dreams of Hope foundation of the Diocese of Armenia, which hosted and implemented the Mobile School as a flagship project, visiting the most vulnerable areas of the Quindian capital, generating new life opportunities for children with the highest psychosocial risk.
“At street level, always when I am in cities like Guatemala City, Buenos Aires, cities in Africa and Asia, you see a lot of street context, but what always surprises me the most here is the use and open consumption of drugs in the street, when we walk down the lane we see people sitting and smoking their pipes openly, but the people we see sitting there are part of the older generation of the children we work with, and they are like this because of the lack of projects and it is there where the challenge for society is: to break the vicious circle and stop believing that these people are the poor people of society,” said Raskin during a press conference that was held at the foundation.
He added that the real change with these children must be a commitment and a vote of confidence from society in general, in believing in their potential and encouraging them to be better and helping them find a life project to re-signify themselves.
“When you approach a shoeshine boy and treat him like a ‘poor little boy’ you’re going to get a ‘poor boy’, but when you can come to him with a decent project and you approach him like a little businessman, he’s going to teach you too, It is the way we look at the ‘pot’ people, and seeing that the way we look at them influences the relationship and the result of dealing with them. It is about trying again and seeing them as people who did not have the good fortune to grow up in a healthy context, the context is the problem, they are not, that is where we must get, and begin to empower them, that is why we developed the School Mobile, you have to be there, when you treat the people there with respect they are no longer dangerous people, but they become your bodyguards, they take care of you, they have nothing and they give you everything they have, they are humble people with potential and talent, we have to start truly believing in them as a society, and they are going to rise up and we are going to put an end to this misery that is the ‘pots’,” said the citizen originally from Belgium.
Thanks to the Diocese of Armenia, Tejiendo Sueños de Esperanza implemented the Mobile School, which since last year has impacted more than 2,500 people, mostly children and adolescents. The methodology created by Ruskin has reached 38 countries, not only in Latin America, but also in Africa, Asia and Europe, where they mainly work with refugees.
Monsignor Carlos Arturo Quintero Gómez, bishop of the Diocese of Armenia, explained that the visit of the director and creator of the Mobile School represents motivation and a guarantee of trust for the Foundation and the Diocese.
“Arnoud has a rapport with people and seeing him share with them motivates us. For us it is a guarantee of trust and from there, everything we have done to benefit vulnerable children, behind them, their families and communities, all from a work of empowerment, because the Mobile School is one of the programs flag of the Weaving Dreams of Hope Foundation of the Diocese of Armenia, and aims to awaken in minors their potential with the entrepreneurial capacity that every child can have,” he said.
The Mobile School is a cart with a blackboard that can reach any corner of the city. It contains fold-out boards and more than 300 sheets with educational games, to become a safe space for learning and fun for children to learn about various subjects such as language, mathematics, emotions, geography, among others.
Now, thanks to Arnoud and his work with the Ashoka foundation, from now on the folding sheets of the Mobile School of Armenia have a special collaboration, that of the largest electronic music festival in the world: Tomorrowland, these boards contain QR codes that When scanned, children can receive a message and teaching about life, love and unity through videos recorded by the 12 most important DJs in the world.
Even a Tomorrowland team visited Armenia a few weeks ago to see the Mobile School and make a video with people who benefit from the Weaving Dreams of Hope project. They visited sectors such as the Smoke Cave, La Mariela and La Lanera to make a video. which will be announced at the end of July during Tomorrowland in Belgium where the arrival of more than 400,000 people is expected, with the aim of raising awareness of the problem, what is being contributed and thus convincing more people to join in to be part of the project and inspire and change more lives.
