Oftentimes, there is little money to be made in the rural areas of Colombia.  With many struggling to simply put food on their tables, commonly, children must go to work in order to help their families.  For an overwhelming number of them, this unfortunately means deserting their own formal education. While sending children to work may temporarily fix a family’s monetary situation, it creates a larger poverty issue throughout the country, as thousands of children reach adulthood lacking basic academic skills.

Fundación Formemos was created in 1992 in response to this problem.  Operating in the rural area of Cundinamarca, the organization strives to take the solution to the problem one step beyond providing children in these areas with only the minimal formal education.  The staff’s organization believes that these children will have a stronger chance of success if they possess the skills pertinent to their rural environment. To this end, Formemos provides boys and girls ages six through eighteen with the necessary skills to be productive in a rural setting as a complement to basic formal education.  These children have either left school, been displaced, or do not have access to quality schooling in their area.  The hope is that with the comprehensive educational foundation Formemos offers, they will be able to remain in the countryside while providing for themselves and their families.

In their school facility, Formemos provides lessons to their students in such areas as livestock maintenance, animal breeding, coffee cultivation, and other spheres pertinent to survival in an agricultural lifestyle, in addition to their regular classroom education.  These lessons are further advanced by Formemos’ farm which allows for the theories learned in class to be reinforced, put into practice and refined. In addition to these the school and the farm, Fundacíon Formemos has a home that functions like a boarding school, housing over 100 children who have been displaced or come from far away to attend the institution Currently, the organization provides the opportunity for an education to almost 200 children who would otherwise not be attending school.

Since 2006, Genesis has supported the strengthening of the ‘Escuela Nueva’ model, the acquisition of educational materials, and the implementation and development of productive pedagogical projects.