Centro COMParte: social economy & peace in Bogota

Colombia is one of the countries with the largest number of single mothers, and women have a 24% wage inequality below men. This is one of the situations that large textile companies have used for a long time to outsource their production costs and pay a low salary to women.

For each garment that a woman makes, her income is $ 0.17, which means that in 8 hours of work a woman can earn less than $ 3.

In the month of July we wanted to pay tribute to those women who have dared to innovate and do business themselves. We held the fair "Amazona" a fair that brought together 8 ventures led by women, in addition to socially and environmentally sustainable products we had forums to promote collective work and even accompanied us the girls of "how good I have" a campaign that seeks to prevent cancer of breast through self-examination.

Of course the Olingo brand was present at this fair, promoting tote bags, tulas, laptop covers and T-shirts, made by mothers head of family. Through the making of these garments, women earn up to 5 times more than what they are normally paid in the textile industry.

In the next month we will be launching our new collection Olingo in which we will have new designs of Toxicómano and Erre. In addition to new products such as Agendas and new styles of cups and bags that have been designed in a participatory manner by the women of Santa Rosa.

Links:

• Olingo Fanpage Social Brand

In « Centro COMParte », we believe in changes, thanks to our project of environmental education and education of peace. We’re not only working on sowing knowledges in the children’s head but also on conveying the passion we have for what we do. We have a deep desire of believing that it is actually possible to live in peace and harmony, alongside with ourselves, others, and nature.

20-30 children are daily received by the educative staff in Centro COMParte to learn about environment and participate in peace education workshops.

Environmental education

Firstly, the process is about dreaming, exploring interactions between the living beings and the territory that allow the existence of the magical nature that surrounds us. Most of these children don’t have any idea of these interactions. Therefore, during the whole first semester we gave them an imaginary ride in the world through different ecosystems and cultures you can encounter.

While drawing, the children were trying to understand the characteristics of an ecosystem and the various interactions that exist between living beings and physical surrounding. It enables them to understand step by step the cycles of life.

Through theater, in addition of reinforcing their abilities to develop personal and corporal expressions, the children will perform the relation that the mankind has with the territory. This activity enables them to understand the meaning of the culture, the interactions existing between the ecosystem characteristics, and how humans manage to adapt.

Handcrafts also play an important role in the achievement of talking about how humans are able to use what surrounds them to elaborate different artefacts.

Nothing is better than a beautiful painting to represent the tropical rainforest and the importance of biodiversity.

A mask-making workshop was the best opportunity to talk about the Masai culture.

We took a seat aboard the Magical Bus and traveled to the unknown world of coral reefs. Through this process we discovered the marine food chain.

The big game

We created a big cooperative game, in which the children had to work in teams with the objective of assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Various clues lead the groups to different ecosystems that had been studied during previous workshops. These clues lead the children to meet with “sages” which give them other leads about how to take care about the planet. With this process the children also learnt that our daily actions create huge changes.

• environmental education (PDF)