2014

The children’s university

Courtesy of Eafit University. Medellin, 2014.

The children's university

September, 2014
Eafit University
Luis Echavarría Villegas Library
Medellín, Colombia.
The EAFIT Children's University is a program for the social appropriation of scientific knowledge that, since its foundation in 2005, has set out to contribute to the training of active subjects in the construction of knowledge and the transformation of society. Children's universities were born in 2002 in Germany, at the Eberhart Karls University in Tübingen, and rapidly more universities in Europe began to implement them.

Today there are about 370 university campuses in the world, inhabited and permeated by children and young people, where the activities carried out are adapted to the needs of social, geographical and thematic contexts. This program develops both activities and content that promote dialogue between higher education institutions and publics other than academics. Since 2005 it has consolidated its own methodology based on practice. This is based on four pedagogical principles: question, game, experimentation and conversation. In 2014, in parallel to the Color Amazonía exhibition at the EAFIT University, we held a color workshop within the Children's University program in order to foster curiosity about the boundary between art and science, the chemistry of color and reflect on the magic of nature and the need to preserve the Amazon rainforest.

Courtesy of Eafit University. Medellin, 2014.