The situation we are going through has meant that in little more than two months the world has had to evolve, rethink, mobilize and streamline processes in which joint work, support, solidarity and empathy have made it possible to migrate towards spaces that are gaining new protagonism: home education mediated by parents and caregivers; and a digital learning scheme to which we are all adapting.

These are vulnerable populations where technological equipment and the Internet are resources that, many times, can only be accessed by reaching a classroom, but we have worked with the directors and teachers of each territory, with the managers and allies under the guidelines of the education secretariats to devise alternatives that allow students to continue with their learning processes.

The Pies Descalzos Foundation has been the support of hundreds of families and students of the educational institutions it accompanies in Cartagena, Barranquilla and Quibdó after the change of their dynamics.

It has not been easy, but we have had a committed team of people who believe in the power of education and what it can achieve. The schedules for teachers and administrators are no longer the same and, as Helen Vega, a teacher at the Pies Descalzos Foundation Educational Institution in Cartagena, says:

"I have understood after all these days that being a teacher is not just a profession, being a teacher is a decision full of love that if we don't put heart into it, it doesn't work."

On the other hand, creating new communication channels and accompaniment strategies has made the Barefoot Foundation continue to redouble its efforts and presence, even beyond the missions set out, because it is today that we have realized that joining together to protect ourselves and others is part of the long road we are building day by day.

Step by step

It is important to point out that no plan drawn up at this time is sufficient, however, the Foundation is part of "Colombia cuida Colombia" within the initiative "La Educación que nos Une", where public and private efforts are joined to improve the management of the educational system; and in turn this work has added us to important initiatives such as "Una Alianza que nos Une" created to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in the most vulnerable populations by alleviating their food and health needs.

Our social networks have been indispensable platforms to maintain contact with teachers, parents and students; making visible their daily lives and their constant work to adapt in the best way to this new reality we live in; and in turn, with those donors and volunteers, old or new, who have believed and continue to believe in our mission.

We have designed spaces for interaction and conversations with different topics that teachers see as necessary and urgent, among them: How to enjoy mathematics at home during the confinement? How to evaluate the learning of your students in this contingency? and How to turn our home into a safe place for our children?We also create useful information for everyone, because education is not just concepts and pedagogy, it is not just terms and theory; education is to facilitate panoramas of personal and social growth that in the future will help us to generate confidence to achieve more and more life projects, those projects that change realities and that, with total certainty, will help to build a better world than the one we have today, because although we are going through a moment of uncertainty, the only thing we can count on is that each and every one of us will be reborn improved from this experience to continue walking together and turn the present of education into a better future.