In 2019, the Fundación Quindiana de Atención Integral commemorated 50 years of existence by offering a Eucharist of blessing and gratitude for their permanence in the Department, and for maintaining the strength and tenacity of its representatives to fight each battle that they face. has been confronted in favor of compliance with the regulations in force over the years, reinventing itself according to the law to provide continuity and not see the care processes interrupted.

In said commemoration, recognitions were made to founding members and benefactors of the institution.

This is a special story, a story with many princes and princesses, an adventure that began in 1968, a year full of magic.

And there they were; together, as an indivisible whole; strong, like an invincible warrior; pure, like the thoughts of a child who eternalized himself in a body without abandoning his innocence.

Fate united them with its magical threads first in front of the ancient greenery of the Uribe park in Armenia, with its majestic trees and the nearby murmur of the Quindío river, when little was known about them, when many looked at them with disdain, when someone labeled them as retarded, without taking into account that they actually had an advantage, but in the art of love.

And they had to adapt to that fate to be part of the Quindío Colombian Association for Mentally Retarded Children. The institution was born thanks to the efforts of society ladies, doctors and parents who gave everything to see it grow.

It was in 1968, 50 years ago. Half a century has passed and they are still children. In Uribe, one of the most traditional sectors of Armenia, with its colonial mansions among the mountains, they stayed for a few years, in a borrowed house, and from there they moved to their new home.

Before they did activities, raffles, they spent sleepless nights, but the effort had been worth it. Now they had a lot, an essential requirement for the Colombian Institute of School Construction, ICCE, to allocate resources for the construction of its own headquarters.

In a natural corner of the El Tesoro farm they continued their story, two years later, in 1976, they entered the north of Armenia, which in those years was a rural area, and their laughter was confused with the song of the birds, their running around resembled the running of the squirrel and the brightness of his eyes competed with that of the sun.

The Government of Quindío, through the Secretary of Education, supports them by assigning teachers; the volunteers of the Civil defense and the institution did not abandon them, always present, like only this one a friend, but a true one, of those who appear when you need it most.

His greatest ally has been the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF), which has walked by his side since his birth, teaching him to grow and encouraging him to move forward and never give up.

In 1980 its first name was changed to the Quindiano Institute of Special Education. Now, with new goals and new advances in the education of special children, he begins his path towards the social inclusion of these wonderful beings.

A serious economic crisis in 1987 led them to protest before the Departmental Assembly of Quindío and this led to the drafting of an Ordinance by means of which the institution was departmentalized and its personnel entered the payroll of the departmental secretary of education.

In 2002, after the educational reform, it was renamed the Educational Institution Quindiano Institute of Special Education, but after the promulgation of the Inclusion Law, issued by the Ministry of Education, the special education institutes were closed, in order to that children receive their classes in traditional establishments.

The government refused to close it. The ministry ordered compliance with the law and new challenges arrived; That is how, in July 2009, new statutes were drawn up and the bird flew again, this time as the Quindiana Comprehensive Care Foundation, now fighting for the social and labor inclusion of young people with cognitive disabilities, who demonstrate in different companies that They are as capable as you.

And they keep smiling, because there is no evil in them, there is no arrogance, there is no arrogance; because they are geniuses to give love, gifted to provide their friendship, their memory is prodigious to remember a smile, and their intelligence is envied to invent innovative hugs.

For them it has been worth the five decades that have passed between tears and laughter, between efforts and a thousand battles, giving fights that must be faced to defend the purity of those children who eternalized themselves in their bodies without abandoning their innocence and who came down from the heaven to be angels on that beautiful earth.