The Northern Catholic University Foundation has virtually accompanied more than seven thousand students in basic and secondary education.
Guaranteeing and promoting participation in all settings and levels of the educational system is the main objective of the Center for Inclusion Studies of the Catholic University Foundation of the North, a unit that seeks equity and quality of life for people with disabilities or health conditions. vulnerability.
In 2023, this Center will celebrate ten years of seeking to promote social inclusion, and thanks to this intense work, Católica del Norte has allowed thousands of people with diverse abilities to access comprehensive support from primary school to higher education. .
“What we have been doing is being able to sustain the entire educational trajectory, this means that from virtual education we generate different alternatives to guarantee access and permanence to education,” says Érica Cárdenas Sierra, professional responsible for the Inclusion Center.
The educational process begins in the basic primary and inclusive middle school, in which more than 500 students with disabilities or illness conditions from the Medellín district have been served through assisted virtuality. In addition, for 5 years in another 106 municipalities not certified in education in Antioquia, the Center for Inclusion Studies has accompanied in person students from 283 educational establishments with which significant progress has been made for institutional transformation.
But it is not only about in-person accompaniment, relying on virtuality as the scenario that facilitates mobility and active methodologies that support diverse population groups, the Cybercolegio, a virtual methodology strategy that allows crossing geographic borders and is led by the Católica del Norte has graduated 7,254 students under this same modality in the last two decades.
“In 2023 there are 1,747 active students, of which 349 have some type of disability or illness, which represents 20%.” emphasizes Cárdenas.
Inclusion in higher education and for work, an example for the country
The accompaniment or comprehensive process continues in university studies. Until 2023, thanks to the Center for Inclusion Studies, attached to the Faculty of Education of the University, more than 700 students have been able to access higher education, of these 54 managed to graduate and become professionals.
“There is an interdisciplinary team that accompanies all processes so that monitoring and necessary adjustments are made almost in a personalized way from the curricula to guarantee that students with barriers to learning manage to complete their higher education studies,” adds the person in charge of the Program.
These types of programs have served to break social imaginaries and break down the limitations that students themselves place on themselves; It is about finding people’s opportunities and guaranteeing quality employment relationships, whether in the same academy or with other entities.
“We still have those social stigmas of the population with disabilities as invisible, we want those life projects to be nourished, for them to reach professionalization and not be simply workers,” adds Erica Cárdenas.
The careers that have the highest participation rate of people with disabilities are especially those in the humanities such as psychology, social work and philosophy, but they have also graduated from undergraduate engineering degrees thanks to the support of Católica del Norte.
The Virtual Inclusive Education program also prioritizes and provides support to people from ethnic groups, victims of conflict and border residents or migrants, researches and focuses on the design of projects on social inclusion for private and public entities, among others.
In the medium term, Católica del Norte wants to replicate the inclusive learning model throughout the country so that thousands of people can have opportunities at all levels of the educational system, in order to remain committed to the construction of a developed and guarantor of rights in all social spheres.
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