Partnership Showcases
Showcase 1: Alpha FC and Pedalea con Conciencia (from Powerful Children Colombia) in Santander and Pereira, Colombia.
Today, we’re highlighting our partnership with Powerful Children Colombia, both through Alpha FC and Pedalea con Conciencia.
“Pedalea con Conciencia is a mountain biking program in Cabrera, Santander, that employs the bicycle as a tool to actively engage and motivate children in the pursuit of holistic development. Children are given bikes, receive support from athletic and mental health coaches, and have an opportunity to build community while learning the ins and outs of competitive cycling. To participate in the program, participants must be enrolled in school” (see their website for more information). For the past three years, we have worked with around 30 students in this cycling program before they go off into the Colombian mountains on their English skills. Since we like to tailor our classes to our students’ interests, we often find ourselves talking about cycling vocabulary. One week, we learned about the different ways to express a desire (I want, I would like, I hope to, etc), and the task was to respond with their goals for their cycling journey. This was Unidos Por El Idioma’s first partnership, and it’s been amazing to see how the kids’ confidence and grammatical skills have evolved!
Recently, we expanded our partnership with Powerful Children Colombia (the organization that runs Pedalea con Conciencia) to provide classes for Alpha FC: “an athletic club based in Pereira that was founded in 2020 with the aim to form athletes by way of Fútbol Sala. The club provides the tools needed to support both physical and mental health growth with the goal to form humans with integrity” (see their website for more information). We are now working with 50 students weekly from Alpha FC, starting from the A1 level. Of course, since they love soccer, we have tailored some of our lessons around different soccer cheering vocabulary. Alpha FC students are also growing to support Minnesota United FC, since UPI is Minnesota-based and now home to Colombian star James Rodriguez.
Showcase 2: Niños con Futuro and the Felipe Costa von Buchwald School in Guayaquil, Ecuador
For the past few months, we have been working with students from 3rd, 5th, and 10th grade from Niños con Futuro and the Felipe Costa von Buchwald School, who support students from Guayaquil, Ecuador, who are in vulnerable situations by providing “the following services: breakfast, lunch, pedagogical instruction, human and spiritual values training, and social and sports support” (see their website for more information). Our focus has been on travel-based lessons, with grammar-focused exercises like the future and conditional tense. For example, we learned about the Virgin Atlantic airport lounge in the London Heathrow Airport, and we used the conditional tense to talk about what we “would” add or remove from the lounge. We’re so grateful for this partnership and have seen the students grow over the last few months both in their technical abilities and overall fluency!
Showcase 3: Fundación La Muralla in Montevideo, Uruguay
For the last few months, we’ve been working with teenage students from Fundación La Muralla, an organization that promotes social inclusion and youth development, especially for children and teenagers in vulnerable situations, through rock climbing (see their Instagram page for more information). We have worked with students at the A2 level, focusing our lessons around sports, specifically American football and the Olympics. The students really enjoy hearing about our lives as American teenagers, so we’ve done lessons focused on skiing and things we like to do in Minnesota, such as going to the Mall of America. We love working with La Muralla because the students are a similar age to us, so we can easily connect and relate to them.
Showcase 4: Hogar Luceros del Amanecer in Camoapa, Nicaragua
For the last two years, we have been working with students from 9-15 years old as a part of our partnership with Hogar Luceros del Amanecer: an organization that supports vulnerable children and youth in rural areas through programs focused on education, nutrition and health, and personal and community development (see their website for more information). We have worked with several different groups of students over the past two years, running on a rotational-group system where we provide resources for those who aren’t able to meet with us every week. All of the students seem to love our Minnesota-culture lessons, especially the one on odd state fair foods like fried oreos and the famous Sweet Martha’s Cookies. Adding on to that, they learned about ordering food with phrases like “could I please have” or “I’ll get the” to help them choose their favorite fair food.
Showcase 5: Education for the Children in Jocotenango, Guatemala
Over the course of two months, we ran a summer camp English program with students from the organization Education for the Children in Jocotenango, Guatemala. They focus on providing “food, physical and mental healthcare, counseling and career guidance [to] remove obstacles to education and enable our students to realize their potential” (see their website for more information). Since it was a summer program, we focused more on cultural activites, such as the holidays of Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, and St. Patrick’s Day, where they dye the Chicago River green!
Showcase 6: Empowerment Internacional in Granada, Nicaragua
For the last year, we have worked with elementary school students from Empowerment Internacional, an organization in Granada, Nicaragua that supports “boys and girls from impoverished barrios who are at risk of becoming street children because their families cannot afford school uniforms, supplies, or adequate emotional support” (see their website for more information). We have started with the most basic concepts, such as simple pronouns and pronunciations, as we are working with students who have no prior English experience. We’re hoping to give them a very strong foundational set of English grammar, and we are trying to focus on the most important concepts in order to accelerate their overall understanding of the language. In our lessons, we have incorporated different scenarios such as a run to the grocery store (like Trader Joe’s in particular) or a trip to the AMC movie theater.
Showcase 7: La Esperanza Granada in Granada, Nicaragua
Two years ago, we started our partnership with La Esperanza Granada, an organization that provides educational opportunities to students in rural areas in Granada, Nicaragua (see their website for more information). This partnership was different from our typical ones: we were teaching university students and helping them with their overall conversational abilities, but at the same time, we were teaching them how to teach basic English concepts. This is because our goal was to give them a foundation of practical English that they could use when they worked with the younger children at La Esperanza Granada. Many of the students had a strong English foundation, but we pushed them to gain confidence in their abilities to speak naturally, since it seemed as if the words were at the tips of their tongues.