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Be a brick in the foundation of another's life

THE OLSA FOUNDATION

BE A BRICK IN THE FOUNDATION OF ANOTHER’S LIFE

OLSA International and the OLSA Foundation are dedicated to arming people with opportunities to help themselves build a future.  

Medellín, known as the City of Eternal Spring, is a common destination point for much of the tourism in Colombia.  With it’s temperate climate and friendly people, on the surface, the city seems to be teaming with life.  However, throughout the city exists severe problems with opportunity, especially in low-income areas and within the orphanage system.  Without opportunity, the worst elements of society become evident: crime, drugs, prostitution, instability, hopelessness.

With your help, we, at OLSA International, thru the OLSA Foundation, can bring hope, opportunity, and a vision for the future to these ailing populations.  See THE OLSA FOUNDATION tab above for more detailed information about our two projects.

VISION

The OLSA Foundation, in cooperation with OLSA International, would like to reach out to and help create opportunities for some of the less fortunate populations of Medellin, Colombia through education with native English speakers from North America.  

OLSA International is the top-ranked Spanish/English academy in Medellin, Colombia (according to Google Reviews).  The school is certified by the Ministry of Education of Colombia for it’s Spanish program and offers conversational English classes and free language exchanges as part of it’s overall concept.  OLSA International’s main focus is to equip locals and foreigners with improved oral fluency in their learned language (Spanish & English).

Program One:  Many people in Colombia live in multi-generational housing due to the limited opportunities for making a sustainable wage.  This practice is much more extreem in the lower-income estratos.  For most in this situation, there is no hope of escaping this extreem poverty.  However, if the OLSA Foundation can reach just one person in each household and equip them with conversational (practical, not theoretical) English, that person can acquire a much higher paying job and support his/her immediate and extendid family, taking them out of poverty and the perils that often accompany it (as mentioned in the principle paragraph).  We are not looking to improve just one life, but entire households; entire families.

Program Two:  Many population groups across the world have support and choice.  Often, the orphaned population does not have these luxuries.  Many orphaned children in Medellin grow-up with limited, or no real education.  Often times these children age-out and are forced resort to begging, stealing, turing to drugs and prostituting themselves on the streets.  This becomes a vicious cycle as these once orphaned children produce children of their own, which they are unable to raise, and turn them over to the State.  The OLSA Foundation would like to break this cycle and provide real-life education and opportunity to this population group. 

To help solve this problem, The OLSA Foundation would like to provide traditional schooling from kindergarten through high school in Spanish and English for the orphaned across Medellin.  All core subjects would be taught in each grade level on a bilingual basis.  Once the student starts high school, they would begin training on a trade they elect.  Upon graduating, these once orphaned children will have a complete education, speak fluent Spanish and English, and will be job-ready with the trade they have already learned.  

Guatapé, localizado en la subregión Oriente del departamento de Antioquia – Medellín

MISSION

The OLSA Foundation was created with two main goals in mind.
1.  To reach and equip the lower-income 
populations (estratos one, two and three) with practical (not theoretical) conversational English skills using native English speakers from the United States and Canada.
2.  Provide full educational services in Spanish and English from kindergarten thru high school, including technical training, to the orphaned population in Medellin, Colombia.