Repairing bicycles was the excuse of the La Isleta Secondary School, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, so that its students could learn to live with migrants who arrive looking for a better future, a project that has received two national awards and which this Wednesday was valued the Canary Islands president, Fernando Clavijo, during a visit to the center.
"What we wanted is to highlight not only the award itself, but also how the Canarian people accept, welcome and integrate those who are fleeing hunger, death and misery," Clavijo told the press.
The president has taken the opportunity to highlight "the magnificent team that this center has and that is carrying out a project that has been awarded" and "to bring closer that reality" of boys, girls and young people, just like our children, grandchildren or siblings "and that They have the right to aspire to a better future like anyone else.
The project, called 'Feeling La Isleta: living together to understand', was developed last year at this institute by first-year Baccalaureate students and young people who arrived by boat and were welcomed at the Canarias 50 center, located in the same neighborhood.
Last December, the initiative received the XIII Vicente Ferrer National Development Education Award and the 2023 Service-Learning Award organized by the Spanish Service-Learning Network, Educo and the Edebé Foundation.
"We had identified that there was a certain racist sector, so to speak, in our neighborhood and our society that affected many of our population, since La Isleta is a fairly multicultural area, we have a large population from both Africa and South America and even from Asia, and it seemed illogical to us that in such a mixed area there was such rampant racism," second-year high school student Nichel Delgado explained to the press.
"We wanted to solve it through inclusion," he added, explaining that as a result of the project they not only fixed bicycles, which were then donated to associations in the La Isleta neighborhood, but also organized soccer tournaments, played basketball and learned some words in Arabic. .
Delgado assures that through the project he has learned "part of his culture, his language" and "how to have that one-on-one treatment and be like another friend."
"Bicycles have never ceased to be an excuse, at a certain time, to live together. What we were looking for was a common thread that would allow us to have time to live together, to talk to each other and interact," explained Iván. Ojeda, professor of Geography and History who, together with the professor of Spanish Language and Literature, Taide Fleitas, has developed the project.
Although the bicycle repair is going to stop this year, Ojeda has assured that the project will continue in another way.
"We have thought about 20,000 different things, from painting pictures to making models. Let's say that the resource is the least important thing, what is really important is coexistence, generating that space for coexistence and for that throughout the year we are going to carry out initiatives with the Red Cross and other associations," he indicated.
These teachers aspire to continue collaborating with the Canarias 50 reception center as well as with other organizations and to work with students on issues such as social inclusion, global citizenship, racism, xenophobia, machismo, feminism or fatphobia, among others. .
Furthermore, Ojeda explained, "what we are creating are little ambassadors who themselves are capable of transmitting to their peers what global awareness, global citizenship, is."
