Often children in Cochabamba, Bolivia, children end up in situations with aggression, neglect and violence at a young age due to their poverty. Education is largely lacking and the children miss the social-emotional skills to deal with the harsh conditions and are not able to build a successful life.
The Casa de la Alegría Foundation helps children and adolescents to build social-emotional skills through workshops in theater, art, dance and music. During the workshops a safe and relaxed environment is provided where the youth can really be children and where they learn skills to build a better future. Themes of the workshops are aggression, trauma processing, assertiveness, resilience and sex education. The Casa d’Algeria foundation also focuses on discovering and further developing talents that children can use in building a solid future for themselves. An important point in this process is that the children learn to be proud of themselves and what they achieve.
The board of Casa d’Algeria is convinced that development aid must come from, and be in collaboration with the locals and that is why they often engage in dialogues with the inhabitants of Cochabamba. In addition to this, only local teachers work with to the children at Casa d’ Alegria. Also, it is important that the children learn skills that they can use for the rest of their lives, without being dependent on long term aid of others.
Casa d ‘Alegria works together with other, mostly local, projects that offer children and adolescents basic help such as shelter and training. In addition to the basic needs the local projects can provide, Casa d ‘Alegria offers expertise in social-emotional assistance. Through this collaboration, the youth are offered a better, more complete aid package that gives them more opportunities to really make something of their lives.
