Externadistas and Egypt District residents: neighbors getting to know each other through art

Students from different faculties share their experience as volunteers of the Conocer Dejando Huella (Learning while leaving a mark) program. This semester, the program incorporated plastic, performing, and literary arts, to promote training processes among the girls and boys of the Egypt District.

The Conocer Dejando Huella Volunteer program begins with an open call to undergraduate students and then provides training. It not only provides useful pedagogical tools to each volunteer but also delves into the community context so students can set up goals and achieve a more human professional development, through transformative life experiences.

Volunteers of the Conocer Dejando Huella program apply much of their university education (project generation, process monitoring, among others) and use artistic skills, in the search for a positive impact on the lives of vulnerable children and adolescents. In this way, week after week, volunteers contribute to the construction of new realities in the Egypt neighborhood, located in the La Candelaria district of the city of Bogotá, a territory part of the University’s first influence ring.

With artistic exercises, volunteer-students and community children learn that the Egypt District Library (an extension of the Externado de Colombia University Library) is not only a space for books but a place for getting together, creation and empowerment; that there, one can take the first steps to making dreams a reality.

This semester, when we asked students what they considered to be the greatest contribution to the training process as a volunteer, some said, “Being aware of how to learn to convey ideas and feelings.” Others stated they realized “there are other methods of educating.” And, most of them said, “Training teaches possible action strategies.”

For now, the Externado de Colombia Library, the Education Faculty, and the Faculty of Finance, Government and International Relations will continue to work, day after day, to enrich the Conocer Dejando Huella program, so Externado students, of any the 11 faculties, have the opportunity to share and grow academically, professionally, and as human beings.

If you would like to be part of the I-2020 volunteer group, please enter your information HERE.