Tech: key to re-empower 42 surviving communities

As part of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Weaving Lives and Hope (WLH) Program, implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the SOLE Experience has journeyed to 41 communities since 2022, empowering them to close the digital divide and strengthen life skills.

We have undertaken over the past three years with this project an amazing journey of learning and building peace using technology. Each year, It begins with a reconnaissance visit to each location, where we connect with the community, introduce the methodology, identify what they need to set up a SOLE (self-organized learning environment), and invite community members to train as SOLE Ambassadors. During a second visit, we adapt the space, inspire and train these new Ambassadors, who then ignite the curiosity of their community and invite them to solve Big Questions using the internet together. With this, they begin holding recurrent SOLE sessions, supported by the Granny Cloud and the ongoing care of the SOLE Colombia team Explorers. Months later, we meet again to recharge the Ambassadors energy to continue in a regional meeting where we give new tools to use the methodology, and where the greatest result is the bonds formed between Ambassadors and Explorers: building community. This recharge motivates towards the next stop in the SOLE Experience, the SOLE Festivals, which celebrate and recognize the communities and their Ambassadors for a year of collective learning. At the festivals, communities share their stories with the world through the Internet. Ambassadors and Explorers graduate and wear the SOLE T-shirt, as cyclists winning a stage of the race. These festivals have always been a farewell for the SOLE Colombia team. It represents a moment where we don't know if we will have the opportunity to visit these territories again, to embrace our Ambassadors and Explorers again. One thing remains clear: as long as we are alive, every ending brings a new beginning. Symbolizing this, at our last face-to-face meeting with Ambassadors and Explorers, we light a candle and exchange words of gratitude and longing. Lighting another Ambassador’s candle represents connection and support. We all experience moments when our flame goes out at some point, and it is comforting to know there is a community ready to rekindle it, helping to shield it from strong winds.

Last week, the winds of US government decisions brought the news that the WLH project would end a year earlier than expected. This year, the last year of the project, was planned to be a caring closure to the people, communities and organizations involved and an invitation to continue as an autonomous community. For SOLE Colombia, it would be an opportunity to strengthen the SOLE community network we have been building for the past 1o years, allowing our Ambassadors and Explorers to meet in person at a national gathering. The opportunity to start a movement that, just as it has ignited the flame in each community, lights a great national flame. This dream remains alive, and we are working towards it, knowing that a strengthened community is a community that endures over time.

Today, the flame of international cooperation is in crisis, thousands of people without jobs; communities confused by the cessation of activities and silence; organizations trying to survive. Today, as always and more than ever, we need support to keep the flame burning. With your support, with the flame that you light in us, we continue to care for our SOLE community from a distance. We keep the flame lit because we will continue to change the world together!

Links:

• SOLE+WLH Infografic material