Solidarity Youth: Colombia, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina together for a Very Special Literary Project
Stories that Bring Us Together, a solidarity service-learning project promoting reading and writing, has launched a call for contributions to publish an anthology of stories written by children and adults from different cultures and then illustrated by university students and teachers.
The anthology of 15 children’s stories will be distributed for free among 500 families, primarily in vulnerable communities across Colombia, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina, where the authors live.
The project continues the path that the five non-formal education centres for primary-school children run by the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Argentina and Uruguay have been following since 2023, which has grown at an accelerated pace so far in 2024. Initially, it was intended that children from vulnerable communities would get to know and connect with children in similar situations in other cities through stories written by the children. Once the initial steps of the project were taken, it became possible to expand the proposal to additional areas and contexts. Today there are twelve educational institutions in four Latin American countries —Colombia, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina— and adults in the literacy process have joined the project, living a solidarity service-learning experience with the same objective and motivation as the children.
The anthology, which will be published by GRAM, is a collection of 15 stories already written and in the process of being illustrated by the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, through the Visual Language 3 Chair of the School of Arts, led by professors Carlos Pinto, Yanina Hualde and Diego Tollo. The mentors of Stories that Bring Us Together reached this institution through CLAYSS.
In the last few weeks, there has been more good news for the project. The Universidad del Salvador (USAL) is considering a collaboration with the anthology of short stories through the University Social Responsibility Programme “Te cuento un cuento 2024: Red de Historias [I’ll tell you a story 2024: A network of stories]”.
Stories that Bring Us Together was one of the experiences presented at the 27th International Service-Learning Conference, organized by CLAYSS in Buenos Aires last August.
The participating institutions are the San Francisco Javier School (Cerro Navia), from Uruguay, the Proyecto de Tu Mano (Montevideo) and from Colombia, the Santa María de los Robles Foundation (Ciudad Bolívar, Bogotá), as well as from Chile. In Argentina, in addition to the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, the following schools are involved: Esclavas del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús School (Ituzaingó, Buenos Aires), Esclavas del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús School (Belgrano), Marie Poussepin LL78 School (Gato Negro, Santiago del Estero), CEIC Santa Rafaela y Pilar (El cruce, Santiago del Estero), Apoyo Escolar Amigos (Sunchales, Santa Fe), Proyecto Dame una Mano (Ituzaingó, Buenos Aires), Santa Rafaela Educational Centre, Poetas con Crayones (Merlo, Buenos Aires), Santa Rafaela and Pilar Community Centre (CABA) together with its School for Adults belonging to the ‘Hogares de Cristo’ Network.
As the prologue of the anthology under production says, this was ‘a small dream cast out to sea like a bottle which turned into a dream of many’ and invites us to ‘come together, make ourselves visible, identify ourselves and discover, through the encounter, the incalculable value of each person’.
For more information, please write to economaprovincial@esclavasconosur.org