In the year 1957, legislative decree 118 of June 21 establishes family subsidy in Colombia. Because of this decree, all companies in the country, both private and public, must assign the equivalent of 4% of their monthly payroll to the social security of their employees. This money is received by Family Compensation Entities, which redistribute it in the form of a monetary subsidy among medium and low income workers, according to the number of people under the care of each one.
The Family Compensation Entities make part of the Social Security in Colombia. They are private non-profit organizations that operate in different fields, in order to improve the quality of life of the Colombian family, by redistributing income and creating an infrastructure of economic and social development. Through the family compensation system, medium and low income workers receive not only subsidy in cash, but also basic services in different areas, such as education, health, recreation, social credit, housing programs, tourism, and cultural and library services, among others. These services are offered thanks to the surplus funds the Entities have after giving workers subsidy in the form of money.
The first of these institutions to offer library services was Comfama, in Medellín, in 1974. From then on, libraries became part of a wide portfolio of social services designed and offered by the Compensation Entities to workers and their families. When libraries became part of the social input of Compensation Entities, library services were incorporated into the subsidy system as an element in welfare that aims at the development and improvement of the human personality, and reading, information and knowledge became a right of all citizens.
From their beginnings, library services offered by Compensation Entities materialized in the form of public libraries, since the members of the family -the worker, the housewife, the children, raison d'être of the Entities-, can find more appropriate answers to their needs of information in this type of library. Some Entities that have schools or educational institutions among their services also include school libraries as part of their educational supply.
Act 21 of 1982 reformed the family subsidy regime in Colombia and established an order in the priority of the services the Family Compensation Entities are supposed to offer. Library services were assigned the third place, which greatly helped the Compensation Entities stimulate and strengthen them during that decade. Already before 1982, four other Entities had followed Comfama's example, establishing public libraries. In 1983, with the collaboration of Colcultura (today The Ministry of Culture) and the Family Subsidy Superintendence (an organism dependent on the Labor Ministry, which supervises the Compensation Entities), the pioneering organizations created a Net called the Family Compensation Entity Library Net, which among its objectives strives to promote the creation of library services in the Entities, and to develop and strengthen existing library services through team work.
At present there are 55 Compensation Entities in the country, 41 of which participate in the Family Compensation Entity Library Net, with 136 libraries distributed throughout the national territory. These libraries, which work with official and private sector funds, serve the whole community and make part of the Colombian Public Library Net. In this net, work is done hand by hand with the other public libraries of the country, which are financed by the Government; it is co-ordinated by the National Library, ascribed to the Ministry of Culture.
The libraries belonging to these Family Compensation Entities have shown the community a modern approach to library services, since most of them have up-to-date collections, materials displayed in open shelves, convenient opening hours, professional personnel, attractive facilities, the incorporation of new technologies, a great will of service, cooperative work, and a modern vision of the management.
One could affirm that 80% of the users of Family Compensation Entity libraries are young people of school age; therefore, the libraries emphasize the responsibility of creating and strengthening their reading habits, one of the missions established by UNESCO in its Public Library Manifesto of 1994. With this in mind, most libraries have child and juvenile collections, with specialized personnel to attend the requirements of children and young people, and organize a wide range of reading promotion activities, among which the traditional story hours, literary competitions, encounters with authors, reading festivals, vacation workshops, literary workshops, readers' clubs, creativity festivals, cultural campaigns and activities, and so on.
Looking for ways to get to children and young people, some libraries also carry programs for parents and teachers, such as seminars, chats, workshops and reading activities. Five of the members of the Family Compensation Entity Library Net, together with other institutions, participate in the Prolectura Net, conformed by institutions that promote reading in the country. It publishes the Cincuenta Libros Sincuenta magazine, with book reviews that guide parents and teachers in the election of children's and juvenile books.
On two occasions, libraries members of the Family Compensation Entity Library Net have won the prize granted by Fundalectura to the Reading Promotion work in the country: in 1995, the prize was obtained by Comfenalco Antioquia and in 1998, by Comfamiliar of the Atlantic.