Education in Barranquilla

Hello and thank you for reading my posting :-)

I guess I should start from the beginning... ;-)
There's a number of non-for-profit organizations, primarily US ones, out there that work to improve life in the impoverished communities in poor countries (or let's say - poor communities of non big 7 countries).
Those organizations raise funds in many ways, one of them is - offering people to "sponsor" a child from that impoverished community. You pay some 15 - 25 dollars a month and the organization spends the money to improve the community where the child lives: they try to build schools, libraries, provide vaccination, give vitamins to the poor kids. In exchange you get the child "assigned" to you and you get an annual report on the child's well being and life.

Well, that's been an introduction ;-) The point is that I'm sponsoring this way a kid from Barranquilla, and I would like to go a bit beyond that basic sponsorship - to be exact I am considering paying for her private school (as I know that public schools in Colombia are not that good); nothing luxurious - just some middle class school..

Her Mom is not very much into all these things (children’s' education etc), and it seems that if I want to do something like this, I have to research everything on my own. The problem is that there's hardly anything on Internet about schools in Barranquilla(including Colombian pages in Spanish).

I don't know what private schools are there in Barranquilla, not talking about how much they cost (as I have financial limitations as well :-(...) and what kind of a curriculum they have.......

Are any of you from Barranquilla?
Do you guys know some decent, no-nonsense, not so expensive school there? [with an emphasis on computer skills, English, science etc – not on religion].
Or at least some English courses for kids? (the girl is 5 y.o.)
Or some other ways to help to improve educational level of a kid in Barranquilla?

All advice would be greatly appreciated!! :-)))))

Elena.

By ElenaL on Sep 28, 2005, 19:08 in Friendly Talkzone.

elmodefoque says on Sep 29, 2005, 07:12:

First of all I wanna thank you. I was once one of those kids that needed a chance to gotto school in Barranquilla, but was not accepted in public school because they claimed I did not passed the intelligence or IQ test which is more in tune with city kids. Until then I was still amazed with the wonders of the wheel. My father did get us into a very nice private school El Colegio San Francisco but I was only there for 3 weeks.
Here are a few names of highly recommended school in Barranquilla:
El Americano
El Aleman
Sagrada Familia
El Servante
La Normal
And many more which I can’t think of right now.

over 5 million colombianos in USA and only 27 barranquilleros, i'm one.Curramba, el mejor vividero del mundo!

KenMan says on Sep 30, 2005, 21:49:

sagrado corazon
liceo cervantes
biffi la salle
colegio san jose

more expensive ones are Karl c Parrish, marymount

carolain11 says on Oct 1, 2005, 05:17:

all of those are pretty good schools, but she's sponsoring a girl, and the ones named above are only boys schools, except for san jose, aleman, sagrada familia and americano. I highly recommend the german school, it is a very good school, i don't know how expensive it is right now, but i attended there when i was little, and it wasn't son expensive.