The PIACBV (Programa Integral de Acción Comunitaria en Barrios Vulnerables) was established as the main extension policy of the Department of Student Welfare and University Extension. This program works with the at-risk population in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.
Its main objective is the construction of communal spaces called "Centros de Extensión" which promote social integration, in order to transform reality in pursuit of inclusion, local development and the further opening of the resources available to the community, all stemmingfrominterdisciplinary, intersectional and participatory perspectives, deepeningthecomprehensivesenseofthesocialpolicy actions, thus contributingto improvingthequality oflife ofpeople throughthe creation ofthe University Extension Centers.
The program was created in 2007 with the aim of promoting community work in the learning mode service. Is consolidated with resolution No. 4308 CS which gives it institutionality.
The program creates Extension Centers, which are established in order to generate stable ties with the communities in which they are inserted. They give the program an organizational structure, centralizing the efforts of the various projects, allow the exchange of information and create stability.
In each center there is an information office staffed with university personnel, who guide activities and later also collect demands and concerns of the neighborhood arising from the interests and needs of various stakeholders.
All the information generated is used to evaluate the actions carried out, plan new interventions, create new programs, interact with the various projects. Teachers and students from various disciplines work on all projects, always seeking to take interdisciplinary approaches, so as to be learning through service practices, and not be limited to assistance activities, tecnology transfer or pre-professional practice. The PIACBV also works on two levels, on one hand creating specific projects (literacy, vocational guidance, counseling, etc.) directly coordinated by the Ministry of University Extension and Student Welfare and intervention techniques that articulate the various projects of the powers. And at the same time, createing a framework containment, which brings security, and technical assistance offered by the Secretariat and stimulates the generation of new interventions by the program heads.
Community Service:
Expanding literacy indicators, implementing cultural activities, promoting employability through various training courses, promoting digital inclusion, dissemination of courses of college study, promotion of community development, assisting in solving social problems and several critical situations, through various forms of social intervention, improving health conditions associated with taking specific issues, vaccinations, optometric health, zoonosis and primary healthcare.
Student learning:
Stimulate the formation of participatory and supportive attitudes and offer an institutional climate open to social problems, promote meaningful learning, promote civic responsibility, commitment to education and work ethic.
The first step then is to establish contact and formalize the relationship with civil society organizations working in the neighborhood where we hope to install the program. In the exchange with the associations relieve the needs of the neighborhood. Associations must possess or be in legal use of space.
The information office's principal duties are to collect and disseminate data, spread the activities and collect the demands and concerns of the neighborhood. All information generated is used to evaluate the actions taken, plan new intitatives, create new programs and interact with the various projects entailed.
It works in three areas developed in close consultation with beneficiaries. Informal education (teaching literacy, tutoring, job training, digital literacy, vocational and teacher training), prevention of health (primary health care, nutrition, optometric health, cardiovascular risk, dentistry) and community development (legal assistance, workshop on citizenship and social sports).
As we work together with organizations, the objectives arising from this relationship. In addition, each project has its activities and proposed. It also relieves the needs identified by each of the programs participating in the project. For example, the survey obtained data on nutrition and obesity, as recommended physical activity that is conducted by the Field of Community Development in its department of Social Sport.
Process of Assessment
The Superior Council of the University of Buenos Aires, under the chairmanship of president Ruben Hallu, approved the creation of Social Practice Education Program, a proposal which constitutes one of the ways through which the University is advancing its social function and an effective tool for students to reach a reflective position facing the reality, through participation in social life. The Supreme Council has established a commission composed of representatives of all academic units that monitor the activities. It also works together with various civil society associations that provide feedback about the needs, achievements and future planning.
Literacy is diagnosed as permanent literacy needs of the population and prioritize those areas with less chance of entering the education system. Specific actions are implemented :
412 students were educated in literacy programs of small groups of eight to ten functionally illiterate adults.
School Support: 61 students working as volunteers, assisting over 130 children.
Job Training: About 50 people participated in various workshops.
Digital Culture: Were trained about 60 young people and adults.
Vocational and occupational guidance: Spreading the college course study information in accordance with the interests to youths and adults. Young people detected by their interests and skills are able to access higher education, and work together with the Directorate General of Scholarships, under the Ministry of University Extension and Student Welfare, to access financial aid scholarships in order to facilitate access to the university. In addition, the program also works with area primary schools. 192 students participated in workshops and visits during 2009. Orientation last year: 48 students. Workshops Year 3: 106 students. Individual interviews: 38
Culture: 83 children, adolescents and adults participated in workshops during 2009.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AREA
Legal Aid and Legal Literacy: Extension Center operates a clinic that provides legal advice to address specific problems of the population, promoting the full exercise of the rights enshrined in the Constitution. It also works on citizenship workshops in schools in the area, which works with children in the understanding of the rights enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of children and adolescents. 15 workshops with the participation of approximately 500 students.
Social intervention: Work with families and attending critical situations such as, teenage pregnancy, addiction, family violence, and those arising from the collision of family and social conflicts. We are focusing the problems of children and adolescents, the elderly and people with disabilities
Social Sport: understanding this as the practice of physical and sporting activities for the whole population, without discrimination of any kind, such as generator including enabling environment for social development, social sports projects implemented including the practice of sport and participation in sports - recreational, to build community and build links between local children. We provide service to 190 sports participants.
AREA HEALTH PREVENTION In this area work the following areas: Visual Health, Psychological, Dental Care, Nutrition, Cardiovascular and Diabetes Risk.
Eye Health: Eye Health Programs aim to strengthen neighborhood enterprises in vulnerable neighborhoods by adding a major qualitative leap in terms of primary health care in the field of vision. The goal, then, is divided into three stages: medical eye care, production and donation of quality glasses and refractive error-specific promoters and training of eye care. The team consists of an ophthalmologist, teachers of the Department of Physical Optics and Geometrical Optics of Optical Career Technical School of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, UBA and students of the School. Nearly 700 patients attended.
Psychological: queries are handled spontaneous demand and on other areas of work. 36 patients treated.
Dental Care: The practice goals are: to reflect on practices related to oral health epidemiological vision to achieve health-disease process and its determinants, including the health care system. Identify needs and demands oral health of the population. Characterize the sectoral response (through the observed pattern analysis). Schedule a specific intervention in oral health. Implement and evaluate planned intervention or participation in a demonstration area-care model proposed. 150 families served.
Nutrition: 880 people attended, 23 student volunteers.
Cardiovascular and Diabetes Risk: The School of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Buenos Aires is conducting a study for the detection of risk factors in an urban population vulnerable.
The Program institutionally articulated extension experiences of various forms, including volunteer projects, university faculty, outreach projects, careers, university chairs and Institutes, pre-professional practices, etc. All of them are held in a matrix that links teaching and research tasks direct impact on the community. In this sense, the field work allows students involved practice the knowledge obtained in context intramural - classrooms, laboratories, and university observatories Context switching involves face areas and situations where it is not possible to assess and provide many variables. For this reason, field work favors the implementation of skills that are not reduced to mere technical knowledge of their own training, but involves the need to make decisions, to imagine solutions to unanticipated problems, typical of contingencies in the imponderables that can not be anticipated. This kind of experience has several effects on students, gaining skills that transcend the knowledge learned within the university, known realities different from those usually associated with the application of such knowledge, and as a result, expand their vision employability and employment.
Fundamentally, interdisciplinary work, and the relationship with neighbors and civil society organizations, under the guidance of teachers, build civic values, favors the formation of citizenship
Recommendations
The Supreme Council has established a commission composed of representatives of all academic units that monitor the activities. It also works together with various civil society associations that provide feedback about the needs, achievements and future planning.
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