1. Selection of families
The SKIP philosophy focusses on providing families with a hand up, not a hand out. From the start, we want to make sure families understand our methodology, which is unique in the communities in which we work. Unlike other NGOs, SKIP requires that families earn the benefits with which we can provide them by participating in our year-long program, including charlas (informational chats) for the parents, and Saturday school for the kids.
While most families thrive in our program, not all are ready for such an approach. We enroll prospective families in a pre-program from September to December in order to ensure that the selected families will fit our style. We measure their participation and motivation before offering any aid. The families that show an interest are offered support for the academic year. Last year’s pre-program yielded 50 new families and over 60 new children, bringing the totals to over 120 families and almost 200 children for this academic year in El Porvenir.
2. School for parents
The "school for parents" is part of our pre-program. Long before school starts, parents must attend weekly meetings with our social workers and psychologists about the importance of education and parental responsibilities. We closely monitor attendance, a factor that helps us to decide which families to accept into the project. The classes are interactive, and parents are welcome to introduce any topics they would like to be covered. Recent topics have included: the importance of education, how to educate a child, hygiene, nutrition, self-esteem and domestic violence.
3. Monitoring
Once a week, we visit each child’s school to monitor attendance and academic progress. Teachers indicate which areas need reinforcement so that SKIP’s teachers or tutors can help the child during extra classes.
4. Contact with families
An important aspect of what we do is maintaining close contact with the families that we support. Our social workers and psychologists work closely with both children and parents, monitoring their progress. If a problem is detected, we quickly visit the family to find a solution.
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