Athena Lab

In Colombia, the main reason why children and adolescents do not complete their secondary education is because they don´t like or are not interested in studying. According to recent data from the ministry of education, out of every 10 childre, only 4 complete their educational trajectory, making the decision to abandon their studies and contributing to the peroetuation of cycles of poverty and inequality. This happens as a consequence of the fact that children and adolescents do not find engaging learning experiences or content that catches their attention in their schools. Consequently, they stop seeing education as an opportunityto build their life project and choose to drop out of school, considering that it is an irrelevant educational process and curriculum that is not pertinent to the social and technological trends of today´s world. 

This situation is aggravated by a family and educational context that is disconnected from the technological enviroment in wich children and ypung people develop. According to OECD data, although 75% of teachers have been trained in ICT, only 34% consider this training a necessity, acknowledging a clear and innovative utility in the classroom that can reconnect students with their educational process. 

To provide attractive, innovative, and active educational experiences with a STEAM approach that stimulates the interest of children and adolescents to continue their studies and complete their educational trajectories. These experiences have updated contents and are in line with the current technological and social context, achieving learning connected to the students' future job opportunities. Through Athena Lab, a laboratory of educational and pedagogical innovation equipped with interactive learning environments, girls and adolescents can enhance their interests and skills in the 21st century, accompanied by specialized counselors. These experiences are differentiated by designing collaborative and inspiring processes with the objective of motivating the discovery of their vocations and the perception of education as an opportunity to build a successful life project.   

The technological and cutting-edge equipment of the laboratory, with elements of emerging technologies, programming, and design, has the purpose of allowing children and adolescents enjoy Athena Lab to take advantage of technological tools in theor daily lives. Finally, Athena Lab seeks to generate learning processes articulated with their enviroment, involving teachers and families in te process. This way, they can rediscover their interest and goals in education through experience.

In Colombia, 45% of the population lives below the poverty line. This, added to the social context and the consequences of the internal armed conclict, means that the main affected are children and adolescents who have difficulties eccasing quality education. On the one hand, due to the lack of interest and economic condictions that make adolescents and young people priorize the search for employment over their education, this results in a school drop out rate of 30% in elementary school and 55% in adolescent between 15 and 18 years of age who do not continue their educational path and do not enter higher education. On the other hand, the conten taught in schools are not relevant to the context and do not awaken student´s interest. According toa study conducted by the OECD, only 15% of the country´s educational institutions had update their curricula to include digital skills, which also makes it difficult for teachers to adapt to the digital educational enviroment by not receiving technological training that allows them to update their methodologies, include technological tools in their classes, and connect with new generations. 

This is why Athena Lab not only seeks to espond to the problems of interest of students but also to offer trining and provide the opportunity for teachers to get involved in the experiences through active methodologies that allow them to generate a connection with students by changing the dynamicof the classes where the student can be an active agent of their own learning process and teachers can learn new methodologies that include digital tools. 

We have more than 60 years of experience working with children and adolescents between the ages of 2 ans 17 years old who are in conditions of socioeconomic vulnerability in the municipalities of Bogotá and Piedecuesta, Colombia. During this time, we have developed an intervention model that is based on 

After two years in which we developed different diagnostics and methodologies for information gathering, the design of methodologies, and the search for qualified human talent to develop the project were carried out, we are in a 6-month pilot phase of learning experiences with students in conditions of socioeconomic vulnerability in public schools in the Suba district of Bogota, Colombia. In the course of 2024, we have impacted more than 450 students in the state education system.   

Athena Lab seeks to go beyond providing on-site learning experiences. Therefore, we have the projection to design and develop an interactive app or even a metaverse for the development of educational experiences. This will allow continuous digital interaction that will enrich the education of students, in adition to serving as a tool to collect information and measure management and impact indicators. We believe that through Solve´s global community, we can find the necessary support to conect with experts in the field, who will help us create and integrate new technological resources that fit the project´s objetives.

The solution is innovative in that it proposes a flexible and personalized model of learning in which meaningful and relevant learning experiences are developed that put the student at the center, so that he finds a practical sense of education in his day-to-day. The design of the laboratory focuses on a horizontal sense of learning, in which the specific characteristics of the population are considered to ensure a safe space where girls,boys, and adolescents can communicate freely and interact with others, develop life skills through the identification of their tastes, and walk the construction of a life project that sees education as an opportunity to overcome situations of poverty and inequality. 

Unlike the traditional educational system, Athena's methodologies propose to integrate knowledge through the STEAM approach in order to invite students to move from theory to practice, enabling them to apply their knowledge and skills in their daily lives through a motivating learning space and environment, with cutting-edge technology that we hope in the future can be integrated with training processes through an App Athena or a Metaverso Athena. 

Finally, unlike other educational processes, Athena Lab proposes a model with ease to transform its methodologies and contents in a consistent way through feedback processes that allow an update of contents according to social and technological trends and that hear the student's voice by putting them at the center of their interests and tastes as a motor to continue and culminate their educational trajectories. 

By arousing students’ interest in learning, by offering vulnerable children and young people learning experiences in which their emotions are recognized, and by enhancing articulate work with their families and teachers around the development of 21st century skills, we will strengthen the connection of students with their teachers who enjoy paying attention and engaging in classroom and have a critical sense about their reality, while improving the 21st-century skills they possess. In the end, these intermediate results will translate into girls, boys, and adolescents passionate about their learning, with goals defined in a life project guided by knowledge and aimed at the culmination of their educational trajectory. 

We recognize the need to transform the teaching methodologies to reconnect the student with his educational process and prevent the desertion of his trajectory with experiential proposals, to apply the knowledge learned and articulated with the student's environment. Athena Lab deepens the continuity of educational trajectories through: 

- Generate an appropriation of vital 21st century skills to understand the application of the content learned in their educational trajectory. 

- Facilitate the recognition of one's own skills and tastes, on which a resilient and adaptable life project can be focused.

We are currently conducting a process of monitoring and evaluating the pilot project, focusing on two key aspects. First, continuous monitoring and evaluation of assistance and coverage indicators that can reflect the project's scope and population growth, as well as highlighting external and internal factors that may pose unidentified risks to the successful implementation of the project. Additionally, this indicator will allow us to measure progress towards our targets of achieving 1,200 children in the first year, 3,000 in the second year, and 6,000 in the third year of implementation. Achieving local and national impact after three years of operation. 

Secondly, we monitor the satisfaction and emotions of the students in order to find opportunities for improvement and feedback from the beneficiaries that enable finding opportunities for improvement in learning experiences. 

Our impact targets focus on two key points. On the one hand, the improvement in the appropriation of skills of the twenty-first century compared to the traditional methodologies offered by the traditional educational system. To do this, we will be counting on a measurement of progress in the medium, at the completion of the pilot, and in the long term. On the other hand, the culmination of educational trajectories through the understanding of education as a life project opportunity, as well as the impact on the transition of the student beneficiaries of the project to higher education, It should be emphasized that this objective requires measuring the long-term impact of the project and following the processes of different beneficiaries. 

Similarly, children’s emotions and motivations in learning processes are vital, so it is essential to implement a medium-term indicator that allows us to recognize the variation in the student’s motivation and interest in studying, as well as their perception of the usefulness of education as a tool for overcoming poverty. To do this, we are building a battery of indicators to measure the frequency and intensity of emotions as a result of learning experiences. 

The provision and creation of learning-oriented curricula in emerging technologies such as robotics, micro-bits, and the management of basic programming software and digital design are propellers for the purpose of arousing interest in students in education. While Athena Lab understands that the technological reality of today's children, girls, and adolescents requires connecting with the digital ecosystems and demands in which these develop, so the basic learning of the management of tech tools is indispensable. 

Additionally, based on the conception of the need to use technological tools as a means of learning skills for life, we hope in the future to develop tools such as the Athena app, in which Athena participants can register and from there track their process, as well as capture useful information to understand the learning needs and interests of each girl, boy, and adolescent. 

We have an stuff of 37 members full-time

2 years in the definition of the problem, design, and construction of the solution. 4 months of pilot implementation, which will develop during 2024  

Since the beginning of the organization, we have understood the need to defend gender equity in each of our projects as well as in our work as an organization. That is why we have a diverse team that seeks to promote female leadership as part of our organizational mission, so that 80% of the management and coordination positions of the foundation are occupied by women, who also hope to be inspiration for each of the girls and young people who enjoy Athena. 

We promote opening employment opportunities to newly graduated young people, giving the beneficiaries of our services the possibility to connect with employment once they complete their careers. For our team, we understand the importance of constantly updating the capabilities to drive the growth of each member, regardless of their rank, so we offer different opportunities for constant training in new tools and cutting-edge knowledge. 

Athena Lab understands that working to reduce school dropout requires articulation with the educational ecosystem, even more in socio-economically vulnerable environments in which education takes a second place and in a context in which 37% of children quit school to fulfill their economic obligations. For this reason, Athena connects with its beneficiaries through innovative experiences within the physical space of the laboratory, in which teachers and parents can participate, impacting the entire learning ecosystem that surrounds it. The participation of students is carried out through mediation with schools that recognize the desertion alerts or wish to prevent this phenomenon. Once Athena is connected to the schools, both students and teachers can begin the experience based on different proposed durations, flexible according to the needs of each student. 

These learning experiences, in addition to having innovative methodologies that seek to awaken the student's interest in the study through the connection of senses and personal tastes with cutting-edge content and learning in emerging technologies on-line and off-line, have been developed. To ensure this, we have developed a work of training a human team trained to make effective use of the lab, achieving unique and meaningful experiences for the students who live it. 

Faced with financial management, the project has been formulated rigorously under a detailed Capex and Opex plan. To accomplish this, we have a network of partnerships that have enabled us to support the pilot costs in which we find ourselves, as well as nurture the academic foundations and the knowledge on which our solution is based. Finally, through the management of local and national partnerships, we are developing a portfolio of services that will enable us to increase the impact of Athena, a project to lead and democratize STEAM learning for boys, girls, and young people from different parts of the country. 

The financial sustainability of the AthenaLab project is based on a comprehensive strategy that combines the effective management of an investment portfolio from the Foundation’s assets, administered by a financial committee, with active resource harvesting through a network and partnership management strategy. This combination of approaches ensures the availability of the necessary resources for the annual operation in the pilot phase. For the Athena growth phase, we are designing and evaluating the impact of services from a social business perspective that allows us to generate resources to finance a percentage of its annual operation. On the other hand, an effective and rigorous system of indicators has been designed to evaluate and constantly monitor budget implementation, thereby ensuring transparent and efficient financial management. Finally, in order to ensure the project's scalability over time, a three-year projection has been planned that considers growth in beneficiary coverage and geographical reach, supported by dissemination, continuous innovation, and flexibility in the methodologies used to adapt to various contexts and specific needs. We managed to raise resources during the design phase of the Athena project, which allowed us to cost the annual operation in 2024.