In the ‘Vidas-Móviles’ program of the Javeriana Pontifical University, the School of Medicine leads a reintegration program for internally displaced persons (IDPs) that is based on much more than just curing the ill. This university/community oriented program helps armed conflict refugees from other, usually rural areas of the country integrate into Bogotá city life, and all that that can necessitate. From direct clinical health care via health brigades, to workshops in community-feeding centres on developing ecology-conscious citizens, along, for instance, with microbiology students analysing the chemical/bacteriological characteristics of a nearby creek to improve water quality; this program has a broad array of participation on different levels. The student and/or volunteer participatory aspect is just one important detail because it is preparing them for a reality that many of the students themselves have not witnessed: the profound and devastating effects of having millions of internally displaced persons. But this good practice and how it harnesses student receptivity is just as noteworthy in the way that it converts the university from being an elite institution on the sidelines, to an area of active agency in terms of resolving the countries’ main long-standing problems. Not to mention how this programme has bettered and saved lives of people with limited resources that otherwise would have not survived.
Since the late 1940´s, Colombia has gone through a sustained period of armed class conflict involving several state and non-state actors. Since most of the more intensive fighting has taken place in the remote jungle and surrounding agricultural areas of Colombia, the peasantry has been disproportionately affected by paramilitary forces' notorious actions, with many being forced from their rural homes to the much different environs of large cities such as Bogotá. The main impetus for the exodus of persons are the rightist death squads known as the ‘paramilitaries’ and have had quasi support from some of the regular armed forces in their activities against two leftist guerrilla insurgencies fighting for a Marxist state for half a century. The resulting five million ‘internally displaced persons’ (IDPs) are in severe need of a wide range of medical, socioeconomic, psychosocial, and other pertinent services. The university is here seen as the most logical place to start the reparation of people affected by the armed civil conflict in Colombia.
Vidas Móviles, consequently, was established in July 2006 by the Medical School of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and the Colombian Association of Medicine Faculties (ASCOFAME) with the idea of developing a program that would restore absent basic human rights that were not ensured to a certain part of the community due to internal forced displacement from their hometowns to the city of Bogotá.
The problem of forced displacement as a social mobility phenomenon related with Human Rights and International Humanitarian Rights has important cultural, demographic, economic, and social implications. Forced displacement, seen as a type of process of demographic recomposition, not only modifies the urban cultural dynamic, when transforming the processes of the construction of the social fabric, like housing, basic hygiene, education, training and health, but also alters the landscape for the recipient communities.
With regard to social capital it is undeniable, the negative impact the displacement problem has in the development of social capital, in the measure that it rips apart the networks of confidence that have been so delicately put together. The phenomenon of displacement also weakens the fundamental unit of society: the family. Therefore, the need for programs like ‘Mobile Lives’ will continue for the foreseeable future or at least until the armed conflict of Colombia comes to a just and decisive end.
The greater goal of the programme is to contribute to the restoration of positive welfare conditions of families through support and guidance based on the work of teachers and students from various faculties and careers of our education institution, from a rights and family health perspective.
The specific objectives of the programme are:
* to help reinstate absent basic human rights; * educational aid in the formation of young professionals from different careers, teach them how to interact in a multidisciplinary environment in which teamwork plays an integral part, and to teach them the often unseen reality of the internal forced displacement problem in Colombia. * finally, the research objectives are to generate new knowledge regarding the problems that are present in the displaced population and to look for possible answers to them.
The main goals of the Vidas-Móviles program are divided by timeframe and by the three other categories:
1. Services to the community 2. Teaching to the students 3. Research
Vidas-Móviles group's work is done in an underprivileged area of Bogotá, Colombia, called ‘Ciudad Bolivar’ because this is the area where most of the population settles in and is the area with the most need.
The Vidas-Móviles program is currently run from the Faculty of Sciences of The Pontifical Universidad Javeriana and it is an independent project of the dean's office. Also, the program is supported by the primary teaching hospital of the university, which is called Hospital Universitario San Ignacio and the JAVESALUD, a non-profit organization founded by the Jesuit community to provide health services to the underserved.
Vidas-Móviles is run by both university staff and students from different careers (medicine, nursing, theology, psychology, microbiology, nutrition, dentistry, and business), along with voluntary students and graduates from Colombia and from abroad (Uganda, Spain, Switzerland, and Chile). Students give their valuable ideas to faculty staff regarding different aspects of the program in order to help improve the quality of the counselling activities. In fact, some aspects of the program such as collecting information, helping in the planning and design of activities, holding workshops, and operating health brigades (supervised by family physicians) are administered by these students. These activities help the students develop their leadership qualities by putting them in charge of activities with the community.
Since 2007, the Vidas Móviles team reports the following results:
1. Consolidation of the work team and of the institutional and pedagogical proposal: 72 hours of weekly teaching, more than 500 student hours 2. Identification of actors and moments of participation (See Bitácora) 3. Inclusion in the intersectoral work table of ‘Ciudad Bolivar’ 4. Establishment of access routes and of criteria for inclusion: education, health, housing, employment 5. Conformation of the School Centre (10/04/07) in the Parish ‘Our Lady of Jerusalem’ in Ciudad Bolivar 6. Accompaniment actions and tutoring (220 family files) 7. Identification and accompanying of leaders and vulnerable groups 8. Design and participation in three health workshops 9. 154 ten-year olds with family and nutritional assessment 10. Health promotion and preventative health activities at the ‘Home’ daycentre for 84 elderly people. 11. Pedagogical Proposal for four community kitchens 12. 86 children in oral health programs 13. Participation with the public health teams in vaccination campaigns and social policy. 14. 100% participation rate in the training workshops programmed by ASCOFAME
There are hardly any universities that work with Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). However, working in an interdisciplinary format is very important (nutrition, dentistry, etc.), and not just in medicine, because it makes a huge difference for students and patients. Working with the community is very powerful and Vidas Móviles is very unique. Nevertheless, this program's uniqueness does not block its replication in other parts of the world, especially those areas with ongoing, reoccurring and/or just-concluding internal armed conflicts (Central America, Sri Lanka, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, etc.).
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