Some 120 students from the Santa Isabel Educational Institution, from the district of the same name in the jurisdiction of Curumaní (Cesar), were benefited with the construction of three classrooms that the Victims Assistance Unit delivered in agreement with the United Nations Program. United for Development (UNDP).
The Deputy Director of Collective Repair, Juanita Ibáñez, and the Director of the Territorial Cesar – La Guajira, Juana Ramírez Gutiérrez, handed over the rooms to the rector of the educational institution, Amín Arrieta, the mayor of Curumaní, Jorge Luis Celis, to the student body and the community.
Each one is equipped with single-person chairs with arm and foot support, boards, stand, counters and chairs for teachers, ventilators and showcases to store utensils and other academic elements.
“This is a subject (collective reparation) that, although it has already closed its process, continues working for social reconstruction. We have an involved community and some leaders who are still working on it. It is not easy, but when there are wills, “said Juanita Ibañez, Deputy Director of Collective Repair of the Victims’ Assistance Unit, who took the opportunity to invite the students to take care of the classrooms and the articles that” with budgetary effort we have made reality”.
For the more than 120 students they finished the classes under the mango trees. Now, with the three classrooms that the Unit delivers in agreement with the UNDP, they will be in comfortable desks, with ventilated classrooms to minimize the high temperatures typical of the region, which also dignifies the relationship of students and educators: “three years ago we came struggling for what is now a reality. These classrooms were about to fall and today, with pleasure, on behalf of all our students, we are grateful for contributing to the education of these poor boys, “added Amín Arrieta, rector of the Santa Isabel Educational Institution.
Within the framework of the implementation of the collective reparation processes contemplated in Law 1448 of 2011 or the Law of Victims, the Victims’ Unit developed an agreement with UNDP to provide a rapid response to the collective reparation plans in the Department of Cesar and make these classrooms a reality, which had an approximate cost of 250 million pesos.
These actions were concerted with the impulse committee, weavers and weavers, students and other members of the community, to support the social and community infrastructure of Santa Isabel, a village located in the Serrania del Perijá and systematically affected in the context of the conflict armed in the country.
The collective reparation process began in the community of Santa Isabel in 2013 with the lifting of the voluntary act contemplated in the regulatory decree 4800 of 2011, and concluded on June 16, 2018, when the process was declared closed, after having given compliance with all the measures contemplated in the Comprehensive Collective Repair Plan (PIRC).
“With these actions we trace a path towards peace and the development of rural communities, we take the goods and services of the State to the places where the violent actions were accentuated as a result of the social circumstances that propitiated conflict scenarios in the department of Cesar” , said Juana Ramírez Gutiérrez, territorial director of the Victims Unit in Cesar and La Guajira.
