Children represent 33% of the population in Puebla, Mexico of those 2,217 children are living in social care institutions where only 17% of children aged 13-17 finished elementary school studies and 14% of these children aged 6 to 15 years old do not attend school (National Institute of Statistics and Geography in Mexico, INEGI, 2020). According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2021) 1 in 7 teenagers (10-19 years old) live with a mental disorder, being depression, anxiety and behavioral disorders the most common. According to the Social and Emotional Skills for Better Lives published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2023) teenagers’ (aged 10-15) life outcomes including among others academic success and life satisfaction are influenced by their social and emotional skills, which are affected by inequities like socio-economic backgrounds.
With this project we will tackle mainly 2 problems: access and continued interest in education and improvement of their mental health by increasing their self-esteem and self-perception and their correlation (education with socioemotional skills).
Our proposed solution is a program of activities, based in astronomy, carefully designed to provide children living in social care institutions in Puebla with a new set or strengthening a set of skills for their use in their professional, personal and human development, also offering them a unique experience that is not part of their day-to-day activities. Ideally we wish to work with children living in public social care institutions, if it is not possible due to the government transition in this election year, we are talking also with private social care institutions.
First of all, we wish to better comprehend their status so the first part of the project will be a diagnosis of both their previous knowledge and mental health symptoms. According to these we will select 60 children, 30 per age group, to take part in our project.
The activities are separated in 9 great themes (Our Earth, The Sun-Moon-Earth System, Constellations, Life cycle of the stars, Solar System and other planetary systems, Our Galaxy, Astronomical instruments and techniques, Space Exploration, Cosmology) based in the Office of Astronomy for Education’s Booklet “Big Ideas in Astronomy” and in each session a series of skills will be developed by means of different approaches to those themes. Although most of the skills covered are STEM skills, we are also interested in their soft skills (like teamwork, communication skills, organization, creativity,…) and their socioemotional skills (responsibility, self-control, achievement motivation, sociability, curiosity, creativity, empathy, trust,…) and their impact in their mental health.
At the end of the project we will survey their knowledge and mental health state and compare them to the diagnosis data in order to find improvements in their mental health symptoms and skills development.
