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March 2005:

 

LAUNCH OF PROJECT IN BOYACA, COLOMBIA

On the 18th February, at a press conference, the Governor of the Boyaca province launched the ICDP project, expressing with great enthusiasm his conviction of its great importance for future healthy development of Colombian society, and particularly in Boyaca, where the family violence problem is the highest in Colombia. He stressed the uniqueness of this project, as for the first time all the different government institutions will be involved in the same training and implementation in 123 towns of Boyaca – something that never happened on such large scales. The project is mainly sponsored by UNICEF and FPAA, but there is also a significant contribution from the province itself.

The governor’s wife, the First Lady, said “she had fallen in love with ICDP at the first seminar held in November 2004”. Ever since then has been supervising personally all the details involving the preparation and development of the project, and has regularly attended the training workshops; currently she is doing field work by delivering ICDP to parents of the children attending the same school as her 6 year old son.

WORKING WITH DIFFERENT NETWORKS SIMULTANEOUSLY

The ICDP workshops, held throughout March, were attended by representatives from different networks, including preschool teachers, educational psychologists, community mothers, health nurses, doctors, clergy and university students and teachers – and each group came to the training with different expectations in line with their own fields of work. At first this proved to be rather a challenge, but gradually the participants grew to understand what ICDP was about and realized the practical value it could have when implemented. The next challenge was to find out how exactly to fit in ICDP as part of their daily work – without creating too much extra work for all. Again the governor and his wife proved to be of great help, as they summoned the Secretaries of all departments and we could discuss these issues thoroughly – in fact, ICDP was officially adopted by all as a long term strategy, not just for this year. In addition, an ICDP presentation was given at a meeting attended by almost all 123 mayors of the Boyaca province, which helped promote our work on municipal levels and also reinforce commitment towards it.

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