Can you tell me about yourself and how you came to work in education?
The “Sisters of the Child Virgin Mary” have been in Uruguay for many years, and have been working in non-formal education for the past 11 years. In the order we move between countries regularly, and I have been here for the past four years. I was charged with the directorship, the more formal leadership in this center, and have been the coordinator of the Children’s Club for the past three years. The organizational model of the CAIF does not include a directorship, but the team asked for someone to coordinate and accompany their work, and so I assumed this leadership as well. I was trained in social work, so I specialize in working with families in their regular surroundings.
Can you tell me about the CAIF and Children’s Club?
As a religious order, we cooperate with the government in order to run both projects, so they are public projects with private management.
The CAIF employs teachers, social workers, psychologists, and psychomotor therapists. The psychomotor therapist works directly with the mother and the infant once a week, stimulating the healthy growth and development of the child. This program is for 0- to 2-year-olds, after which the children enter the 2- and 3-year-old classrooms.
The classrooms for 2- and 3-year-olds also work on motor and sensorial skills, which are important for the child’s development. We also cooperate with the local health clinic, and ask parents to keep their children’s health records updated. Because of the social background of many of these families, they do not have proper documentation for their children, so we help them with this process. Additionally we offer psychological accompaniment, which is however not therapy, and the social worker visits families at home. To conclude, the CAIF is a holistic center addressing children’s and their families’ needs in a well-rounded manner.
In order for a child to participate in the Children’s Club, it needs to be enrolled in school. The children come here after classes, eat lunch, and then are helped with their schoolwork and offered to take part in different workshops. The social worker also visits these children in their homes, and we make and effort to communicate with the respective schools in order to address behavioral or other challenges the children face. So here also we use a wide approach, not limiting our attention to the child itself.
What is Fe y Alegría’s impact on these programs?
Fe y Alegría, even though it is an international federation, has particularities in each country. It has been in Uruguay for four years, but our center has been here for 10 years. When Fe y Alegría was created here, we integrated ourselves into it, and now it accompanies us in our work. In our particular case, our order is a member of Fe y Alegría, but we also work in partnership with the Uruguayan government.
As far as the concrete work Fe y Alegría goes, we are currently in the process of realizing an educational quality project. This includes continuing education for all of our staff. Fe y Alegría strives to achieve that “the poor person should not receive a poor education,” and in order to prevent this we need to strengthen and train our staff. It is very common for orders to work in cooperation with the government, so there are numerous CAIF and Children’s Clubs throughout the country. But because this center is part of Fe y Alegría and the Sister’s order, it has a different character. You can see this for instance in our educational quality project, the way our work integrates religious themes and reflection, and the general support and training the staff is offered.
What are the biggest challenges you face in your work here?
One challenge we face, and with which Fe y Alegría is helping us, is strengthening our staff to work in this critical context. Our staff was trained in state institutions, and oftentimes the extra training needed in order to work in these difficult environments is considered an unnecessary additional cost. We work with children who live in very conflictive situations, and it is very challenging to accompany and support them in this social reality. In addition we have problems with security in this neighborhood. This is a dangerous area, and insecurity is a daily struggle. So it is a challenge to continue working in this context day after day, because it is both a psychological and physical burden.
Another challenge we have is finding the financial resources to do our work. Because we work with the government, it decides how much money we receive. This money isn’t enough to pay our staff. In addition, our buildings are in need of upkeep, and in this environment it hard to give a quality education. Quality requires certain resources. We want to respond to the need of the society, and especially the needs of children, but without any resources this is hard.
Another thing that will always be present is the work with children who live difficult lives in conflicted families. But they are the reason we are here—if they didn’t exist there would be no reason to do the work we are doing. So you can’t really call this a “challenge.”
How do you strengthen your staff?
We meet once a month with a moderator from the Catholic University. Together we discuss what the mission and vision of our project is. This is the part of the work, which focuses on strengthening the structural aspect of our center, and improving cooperation and focus amongst the staff.
Another aspect on which we are working is improving our use of information technology. In this context another person from the university came and gave a seminar, which is something many of the staff would not be able to afford privately.
Finally, we have two meetings a year where we meet other teachers and staff from centers like San Adolfo and Don Bosco (both schools that now belong to Fey y Alegría). This is a very enriching and strengthening experience.
What do you think education can accomplish, and how do you see this manifested in your work?
One thing we consider an accomplishment, and which we are seeing clearly in our center, is that families feel comfortable and at home here. We want them to feel like they belong here, have a link to the center, and also get to know each other.
Another way in which we see our work succeeding is that children who have graduated from the program keep coming back to visit. It is nice to see them grow up, and witness how the work we did with them early on is helping them now. Due to the help we give the children when they are younger, they have had exposure to different learning techniques, which is a great contribution non-formal education can make.
We can also help the children become more familiar with their own country. Many of our children have never been to a beach or a museum before, even though there are so many here in Montevideo. So we take them out to explore, they learn how to respect nature, and how to behave in public spaces, such as a bus.
What does Fe y Alegría mean to you, and what do you see as your mission working with this network?
I believe that working with Fe y Alegría means we can strengthen and say it is worth it to work in non-formal education. It means working with families and their children, so that they can achieve their goals and don’t resign to their current situation. In this sense the order and Fe y Alegría share many ideals. Padre Vélaz used to talk about education where “the asphalt ends.” We as an order speak of where “the need is great and extreme.” There is a lot of need in many different places, but we are going to focus on those who need the most support. And this is where faith helps us.
How do you work with volunteers from the university?
We have been receiving volunteers from the Catholic University since before our cooperation with Fe y Alegría. In their first year of studies, students at the university are offered to volunteer here. For us, the volunteers enrich our work here. They serve to refresh and reanimate our work. Some stay for multiple years, while others complete one year of weekly service. Since being part of Fe y Alegría we have also started receiving volunteers from the Jesuit high school of Montevideo.
What would you like the volunteers to learn while they are here?
On the one hand we don’t want the work here to be a burden, but rather something the students enjoy to share with us. They don’t have to bring anything, the only thing that matters is that they come, are reflective and ready to create connections to the children and families they work with. Many of them, since they have just started studying their subject of choice, can use this as a way of getting to know the career they have chosen. Many are education majors, others educational science majors, or communication majors. Some realize that this is not the work they are made for. Others are able to confirm their wish to work in this field.
On the other hand, from their own background and the knowledge they are gaining in their studies, the volunteers are a huge enrichment for the center. One girl, for instance, gave English classes here last year. She inspired some children to learn this language, and one of her students is now going to study English. While the volunteer is no longer here, the contact with the children ignited a new talent, a new quality in them.
Tell me about non-formal education.
I believe that non-formal education is an important support for formal education. At the same time it runs a certain risk: Sine the formal education system is so rigid and makes the child attend classes from 8 in the morning onwards, the child may be institutionalized too much. At the same time we are responding to the needs of children that spend too many hours alone at home, and we try to do this in a more flexible and liberating educational style. We work with the school, the health center, and social services in order to give the child what it needs. At the same time we try and organize a program with many excursions and fun activities, so that the children are not institutionalized excessively.
Background: As part of the Education and Global Social Justice Project, in May 2012 undergraduate student Charlotte Markson interviewed Sister Gisela, a member of the Sisters of the Young Virgin Mary with training in social work and coordinator of the order’s Young Virgin Mary (Virgen Niña) Center for Infant and Family Services (CAIF) and Growing Together (Creciendo Juntos) Children’s Club in Montevideo, Uruguay. In this interview Sister Gisela discusses the holistic services provided to children and families, Fe y Alegría’s role in supporting quality programming, and the challenges and successes of working in the non-formal education sector.
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