Thankful Hands: Our Ten-Year Chronicle by Manos Visibles

10 YEARS BUILDING LEADERSHIP manosvisibles

Visible Hands Team Paula Moreno, Founder and President Diana Restrepo, Vice President Ana Isabel Vargas, Senior Technical Director Yoanna Melo, Administrative Director Andreíza Anaya, Communications Director Katheryne Hernández, Technical Manager Darwin Perea, Cultural Manager Giuliana Brayan, Technical Coordinator Valentina Poveda, Technical Coordinator Valeria Brayan, Technical Coordinator Javier Moran, Buenaventura Lead Coordinator María Inés Requeneth, Tumaco Lead Coordinator Julián Velandia, Community Manager Carlos Ortiz, Administrative & Legal Coordinator Felipe Viveros, Legal Counsel Felipe Quintero, Web Master & IT Advisor Francisco Amar, Information Systems Advisor Juan Felipe Gómez, Accountant Martha Lasso, Auditor Leidy Alfonso, General Assistant Yaneth Ruge, General Services

Board of Directors and Assembly Bart Van Hoof (Board Member) Diana María Restrepo (Board Member) Héctor Hernán Vásquez Ocoró (Assembly Member) Ismenia Benítez (Board and Assembly Member) José Domingo Bernal (Assembly Member) Lucía Asué Mbomío (Board Member) Paula Moreno (Board and Assembly Member) Yezid Viveros (Assembly Member)

Author of “The Memoirs 7 years and 10 years” Enrique Patiño Visible Hands Editorial Team: Giuliana Brayan, Katheryne Hernández and Paula Moreno Editor: Carlos Hugo Jiménez E. Translation team: Rachel Mina and Jeremy McNeal, PhD Design by: Felipe Quintero Photographs: El Murcy (Member of the Visible Hands network of leaders), Enrique Patiño, Julián Gallo and the Visible Hands archive

Dedication To the marginalized communities, so often forgotten, thank you for sharing your power with us. To our donors, partners, and tutors, thank you, for making this process a part of your life project and for believing in us, not despite our differences, but because of them, because these differences unite us. To the leaders and communities of the African diaspora, who have been an inspiration and a mirror for this process.

INDEX 2 Ten figures to understand our impact, where we

are, and who has accompanied our path? 6 Making the margins the center 8 Ten words that define us 12 Ten years of advocacy and projection 13 Our programs 33 Transformation stories

54 New futures, new leaderships, and new transformations 56 Our challenge: to lead the inevitable 57 The importance of dreaming and visualizing what we want 61 Headlines of our memory

VISIBLE HANDS IMPACT OVER 10 YEARS

+6.500 +100

leaders trained

organizations created and strengthened

+70 +150

interventions carried out

high-level tutors linked to our programs

+70

partners in the private, academic, and international cooperation sectors

+2.500

future high school graduates level students trained in the region 2

WHERE ARE WE? Caribbean: Bolívar Pacífico: Valle del Cauca Chocó Nariño Cauca Bogotá D.C: Bogotá Antioquia: Medellín Caquetá: Florencia Caldas: La Dorada Risaralda: Pereira

COUNTRIES OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA Brazil Spain U.S Ghana Mozambique

OUR STRATEGIC PARTNERS Bank of the Republic Fulbright (Colombia) University Foundation of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano Institute of Intercultural Studies University Javeriana Cali National Library MIT Colab (United States) SATENA University of the West University of Los Andes EAFIT University ICESI University Villalón Productions

OUR DONORS AECID (Spanish Cooperation) Arroz Blanquita (White Rice) AVINA BBVA IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) CAF - Development Bank of Latin America CELSIA CORDAID United States Department of State National Endowment for Democracy (NED) International Organization for Migration (IOM) Open Society Foundations ESAP Embassy of the Netherlands in Colombia Korean Poverty Reduction Fund - KRP Ford Foundation South American Foundation John Ramírez Moreno Foundation Halloran Philanthropies USAID

INDIVIDUAL DONORS Bart Van hoof Daniel Gonzales Hernán Bravo Johanna Peters Paula Moreno Salomón Vaie Susana Edjang Tobías Olmos

“He created the act of assuming personal responsibility to alleviate ordinary, habitual, and irresistible social harm.” Toni Morrison’s tribute to MLK Jr 5

MAKING THE MARGINS THE CENTER When one is counting years, a decade will always be short. However, Visible Hands has already left a crucial imprint on todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s generations in the Pacific and other excluded regions in its first ten years. Its most significant mark lies in the fact that many people on the margins understood that the leaders should not be outsiders, but it should be them. In this process, they also understood that a leadership role assumed from the disposition, the decision, and with the intention of building does not consist only in having power; on the contrary, it must be assumed from an ethical and moral authority, as well as with an effective strategy aimed at the well-being of the communities. In the past ten years, something else was evident: that the possibilities of retrieving power are feasible, but that it is also necessary to prepare and to assume a transition from resistance to reach transcendence. This substantial model shift has marked a decade in which effective inclusion exercises were developed that led to transitional leadership. This means that the opportunity was opened to learn, to conquer, and to occupy spaces of power, but it is still incomplete to evaluate what these leaders did with the power they achieved: if they were truly valued by their communities, if they exercised their power and leadership ethically, amazing results will have been reached within these communities. Many cases show us that learning is valid if we look towards the medium and long term, but that also prompts us to think about the possibility of new futures, even more specific, in the transformations that we expect. Times have changed substantially and will continue to change. Visible Hands turns ten years old at a time of transition for the world, in which unquestionable realities have begun to crumble due to the impact of a global virus. The COVID19 pandemic has clearly shown the existing inequalities that did not seem to matter to anyone and has highlighted vulnerabilities to the point of forcing us all to propose new development models so as not to impoverish and widen the gaps, which were already wide. In these moments of transition to a new model, all forms of innovation and new leadership will have an opportunity to create new structures. In this space, and by reflecting upon the words of American Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, â&#x20AC;&#x153;the future will be defined by those who have been pushed to the margins, those who have been put aside as if they were irrelevant excesses, souls that even today are conceived as unfortunate and marginal. â&#x20AC;? History has seen times like this so far, but the changes are irreversible, and they will happen. We are still far from the margins being the center or the structural problems being solved. Leadership is still learning to exercise power. History has proven it countless times: no ancient structure has remained unscathed and no empire has dominated endlessly, but the voices that are raised and are heard, sooner or later, change history. And our time is coming. In this global existential crisis, where environmental and cultural sustainability are at the forefront of the agenda, issues such as racial and gender inequality, as well as the risk of extinction of an important part of the civil society are already at a breaking point. Future scenarios seem to be presented in two ways: you can go to a moment of greater relevance or to one of greater exclusion. 6

Faced with these two paths, Visible Hand’s commitment to leadership and transformation of marginal communities becomes more critical. Right at this moment of uncertainty, the questions become more important: “Power? For what? Where is the power coming from? Whose power?” Having the vision to anticipate and create new notions of power and a more effective leadership is our task, as well as being able to channel discontent, exclusion, and frustration towards a power and leadership with vision and for the reconstruction of so many old problems that do not we have been able to solve. Visible Hands worked during its first decade in generating leadership, transforming lives, and modifying the exclusive dynamics of power. From now on it will work to grow in voice, agency and representation, always thinking about the future of the country, not only for the regions, but from and with those other Pacific countries of the national geography that will modify the models that are collapsing to erect new ones. It will do so from its resilience, with its own vision and with its connection, advocacy and execution capacities. The challenge is great, but our commitment even more.

The future will be defined by those who have been pressured into the margins, those that have been pushed aside as if they were irrelevant, souls that even today they are convienced they are marginalized.”

is the ability to generate transformations POWER Power and move actions. When leaders gain power,

10 WORDS THAT DEFINE US leader is part of the support that leverages the LEADERSHIP Achanges in a society. Building leadership involves expanding knowledge, tools, and possibilities for more people to move the world and take the necessary steps to transform their environment in a positive way. A leader reaches out and guides. A leader believes in the power of others and in collective power. Leadership has been Visible Handâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest bet.

they also gain the advocacy to transform their environment and their community. Human power, contrary to that of nature, arises from reflection on the common welfare and has one purpose: to serve others so that the members of their community evolve. The fact that power is disfigured and generates inequity or exclusion forces us to reinvent it from the leadership. Power is what the peripheral regions have gained in the last ten years.

The most common way people give up their power is to think they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any. Alice Walker Jr

At the root of it all, leading is serving. It is meeting the needs of a group of people, ensuring their safety and give them the support they need to grow. A true leader transcends individual interests - whether political or personal - and gives priority to the human beings in his or her care. Mata Amina

TRANSFORMATION

Identical with change, transformation is the challenge of taking the elements that we have at hand to do something new with them. There is no element of nature that is not transformed in its growth process: the seeds make it into trees, the continents into changing geographies, the molecules into chemical elements. The transformations generate breaks with previous molds, but they are necessary for evolution. Leaders transform realities.

Changes will not come if we wait for someone else to make them or at another time. We are the ones weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek. Barack Obama 8

is the absence of conflict. If peace is conceived PEACE Peace as a concept grounded in the territory and its daily

reality, to speak of peace in the Pacific, a region that concentrates 125 municipalities critical to the post-conflict, is to speak of an issue that many still do not know and that its inhabitants find more symbolic than real. A peace that does not have the territories or local leaderships is an exclusive peace. In this region, plagued by unlawfulness and the historical neglect of the State, peace is a fundamental structural issue. Therefore, it must emerge as a bet of active citizens, actors for territorial peace, who clearly propose to the government and international cooperation the priority lines to build local strategies to achieve it.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice. Martin Luther King Jr

The people will never give up! Never! Pacific Civic Strike Movement 2017

RESISTANCE

Resistance is the force that opposes a sometimes for dominant force. When the resistance is strong enough, it becomes a transformative power because of how it forces dynamic change. In electrical circuits, resistance is the element inserted in circuits that modifies the flow of current and generates heat. The resistance that excluded populations emit flow in opposition to the forceful dynamics that are the ones exclude them. Visible Hands supports resistance from leadership and from education as an engine of change, based on knowledge and empowerment.

People resist, people resist, people resist, because our song still exists. “Oye nuestro canto’, Ensamble Pacífico

TRANSCENDENCE

The power of this word, transcendence, lies in the fact that it speaks of the capacities of each person to shape their environment, family, community, territory and beyond, to fulfill a vital and collective mission of transformation. A leader that transcends and works with transcendence is equal to a memory that is not forgotten: it leaves a mark and affects the emotions; it also speaks of the greatness of the spirit. Edgard Gouveia, a member of Afroinnova, said that, “the great task of Afro-descendants in their future agenda is to move from the power of resistance to the power of transcendence.” Visible Hands is committed to leaders who take that step, leaders that leave their mark and transcend.

When Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream”, he was not playing games, he meant it. When he imagined it, he created it, he created it in his own mind, and he began to be. We must dream it too.

Toni Morrison

NETWORK

A network can be described as an organized fabric. Just like a spider web, it is a network of threads destined for a survival purpose, like a digital road or telephone network, it is a set of elements that are interconnected for a greater purpose. When there is no connection and there is no sense of an ecosystem that allows the network to grow, populations become disconnected and lose power and the transformative impact of their leaders is not as effective. The network is the connection that allows change and the flow of new ideas. In a solid ecosystem, and community that are related to each other, that network is always possible, and contains a vital energy.

In Colombia, culture is the spiritual and emotional infrastructure of the country; an infrastructure that connects memories and expressions, and is capable of uniting and highlighting differences, as well as putting value on shared meanings. Paula Moreno

CULTURE

Everything that makes up a population is part of its culture. The material that makes up any culture ranges from its songs and dances to its ancestral medicines and musical instruments, also the way it expresses itself, its diversity, and the constructions that exist in the territory. In the case of territories like the Pacific, culture is wealth. And it is through the wealth of each population that leaders must work to strengthen their networks and expand ecosystems, to generate resistance and gain power and finally transcend. Culture is the capital and currency of our transformation.

People do not have prescribed role-models. We get our reference from our culture. Lázaro Ramos

VISION

Vision looks to the future. Someone with vision can foresee the best possible scenario to come. Looking at things from a new perspective means that it is possible to see them from another angle. Visible Hands has opted to empower its leaders from the commitment to the regions so that there are new possibilities, both in the leaders and from the country itself. According to the users of social networks who defined Visible Hands in a word, the vision of the corporation goes hand in hand with its ability to “empower” and generate “opportunities”, “make visible” and connect them from the “love” for its history and territory. All these words for a new vision of leadership.

Education is our passport to the future. Tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. Malcolm X

EDUCATION

Power develops when a person is given the tools to learn how to manage it. Leadership is acquired when the image of exclusion is changed, and it is understood that inclusion changes. It is also understood that inclusion and a new narrative of history are both possible. Opportunities arise when education is strengthened. Networks are built when education and corporation is refined, and a collective power is created. Education is not an accumulation of knowledge, but an accumulation of power. Having education is having the possibility of transforming.

We have the ability to create the future of each individual person, for that person to invent their own teleology and organize their own values to find a harmonious balance between the different dimensions of existence. Felwine Saar 11

10 YEARS OF ADVOCACY AND PROJECTION How is reality transformed? About 2,250 years ago, Archimedes hypothesized in a statement that the best way to achieve reality was to have a point of support to move the world. His hypothesis, although it was decisive in physics, was not limited only to mathematical equations. The point referred to any factor that would leverage a process or to any leader that would allow movement of solid and traditional structures. Visible Hands served as a point supportive and believed, a decade ago, in the power of leveraging other leaders so they themselves became points of support. More united forces can move than just one. Visible Hands has also become a dynamic engine of change that has begun to implement new programs that engages new leaders. These leaders in turn, move new pieces and create a new regional dynamic. The system of circular transmission of gears, which follows Newtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s precepts, has a wonderful distinctiveness: everything fits together, it complements and transmits the movement. If one piece moves, they all move. And they all serve a greater purpose. In one of the countries with a stark unequal force flowing throughout, and with a clear intention of reversing that that exclusive reality, those two physical principles served as the foundation for Visible Hands will begin to make possible the bet of its founder, Paula Moreno: serve as a support to strengthen leadership, engage new ecosystems transformation, and thanks to these dynamics, generate a movement that would allow new narratives to emerge and exist in new capacities when strengthened. In January 2011, the impression of changing mental structures began, a social and institutional change in Colombia with the Development Management program for Afro Colombian leaders started in Cartagena and in the north of BolĂvar. Ten years later, this model was highlighted by the World Economic Forum in 2018 and the Global Fairness Award in 2019, it is more than ever a support system to forge a more geared society in justice and equal opportunities.

OUR PROGRAMS For a decade, Visible Hands has delivered leadership programs moving from resistance to transcendence. In every workshop and classroom there has been talk of the power of education to achieve development and peace, there has been a new vision of the region and human networks have been established to transform reality. These programs have been governed by words that, like umbrellas, cover great concepts: they teach how to govern, innovate, and manage development, how to be a woman leader and connect. There is a powerful reason for each of these umbrella verbs: they are linked to human transformation. Governing in Visible Hands is more than getting the chance to exercise power as well as innovating in a more real way to form creativity. The background is to engage a more positive way of relating, leaving behind a prevailing model that generate inclusion. Connecting and narrating, as well as being a woman, are a reaffirmation of natural human connections and a reconnection with what is essential. Reconnecting with ourselves and empowering talent to redefine power is the goal that defines the Visible Hands programs.

GOVERN

1.Poder Pacífico (“Power of the Pacific”). From its very

name, the show revealed its purpose and play: Power, as a verb, means the ability to achieve a goal, but also it means it can influence the behavioral patterns of people and institutions. Pacific Power referred to the place where it was necessary to change the power relations that had established them. This iconic program was born from the above-mentioned philosophy. It was designed to change unwritten codes of exclusion that operate in Colombia, that allow, certain leaders to enter spaces of power and others not, or that the predominance of certain elites over others based on their origin, place of study, or higher education level. Poder Pacífico decided to open an important door to Pacific leaders so that the disparity was reversed by a master’s degree designed to strengthen and give tools to change power relations and leadership dynamics. The decision to form regional and national elites outside the center of power implied and understanding that new relationships would only be possible if it began with the self-inclusion. Where each leader understands that there are no forbidden spaces or roles because of their ethnic and territorial background. The key practice is to think in terms of “we” instead of “them” in the different spaces where diversity is key for performing power. Two Colombian universities (Icesi and EAFIT) became key players for the creation an educational ecosystem for the transformation we were looking for. When it comes to filling the gaps in existing postgraduate courses and open new possibilities to professionals in the region, first in a theme of Government and Public Policies, and then in Government and Construction of peace. With the Pacific component in mind, the master’s degrees helped the mobility of the grassroots leaders. Many of them have already reached high public positions as advisers or in spaces of incidence inside and outside the country. Our association with the universities that supported “Poder Pacífico” generated an institutional commitment to the Pacific region. Poder Pacífico/ Pacific Power graduated two cohorts in each university. The graduates today make up a network with more than 130 leaders that have graduated from the Master of Government. However, the major achievement is that it allowed several of the unwritten social codes of exclusion and achieve what the name of the program: May the power be the Pacific.

2. School of High Government “Poder Pacífico”

Power had to be conquered in order to wield it. However, to reduce the gap in the Pacific, it was not enough just to win it and achieve political influence. It was also urgent to change the power relations. In the process of opening spaces, there is a greater need: to train social, public, and private leaders in governance. The Pacific, where life sprouts with vitality and biodiversity is as varied as its culture, it still needed to sow the seed. Visible Hands understood that power was not just an individual conquest of leaders fighting on their own, but a totality of bonds, an interwoven web, the vessels communicators in which experiences are exchanged and ideas are compared to build an interconnected, purposeful, and strategic leadership. The high number of applications to the Pacific Power master’s degree has made it clear that a school was necessary for leaders who wanted to gain technical foundations when it came to understand political language and achieving transformations. The initiative focused on training students and, at the same time, inviting them to exchange their experiences to develop capacities in matters of government, management, policies, and leadership, while inviting them to confront their ideas and initiatives with experts at high levels. Carried out on several occasions in the four strategic nodal points of the region, Cali (which covered the North of Cauca) Buenaventura, Tumaco, and Quibdó, generated a crucial impact in the region, reaching approximately 400 participants. Next, the Committee of the Civic Strike was created. From there, there were many processes that emerged from the Social Pastoral, which are initiatives linked to the laborer or citizen leadership, and above all relationships in all sectors, which continue to interconnect beyond the School itself. Its participants understood the importance of have a civic role, they went from complaining to understanding governance schemes to know how to move in the game of politics and, above all, they learned to play with advocacy tools.

In response to this prevailing inflexibility, innovation was a breath of fresh air. Visible Hands was aware that in a democracy, the participation the citizens had to establish new alternatives for a dialogue. Just like that, the people participate in decision making. Therefore, the bet was to create new mechanisms to improve power relations and bet on the inclusive and social. In 2015, the Laboratory of Political Innovation for Peace was born, which had the support of the Spanish Cooperation in Colombia. Its practical approach was to empower the candidates who participated in the regional elections in October 2015, to enable them gain greater knowledge of public management and in regarding new forms of intervening in politics. Fernando Cepeda Ulloa defined it as a step, “from intention to intent”, and therefore itself as a tactical and political exercise in which several specialized tutors went on to exert practical leadership in telling applicants how to play in politics, using ethics and identity as starting points. Each participant understood that they should have a defined political agenda if won and in favor of the people who had elected them, and who should consider being a leader with knowledge in aspects such as economics so as not to stay on the sidelines. The program rose to prominence by revealing how current policies still do not faced with the historical institutional weakness in the territories, and how, to stop the cycle of inequality and generate dynamics of peace in the political innovation is crucial. One of the premises of the program, was that the candidates had a greater tactic to approach people and that their proposals were inclusive, and to improve the quality of life of the communities and transform the reality of the region. So it was: The Laboratory of Political Innovation for Peace that strengthened the capacities of a critical mass of political leaders to start generating big changes in their communities. That was already a leap of innovation politics: of the 120 participants, more than 50% participated in the political contest and half of them won. Bleny Vallecilla was the only female city counsellors in Buenaventura. In Quibdó and Istmina, Yessimar Álvarez and Jean Carlo Lemus were the youngest councilors.

INNOVATION

3. Laboratory of Political Innovation for Peace (LIPP).

There is not one laboratory where it is possible to mix permanent tests and adjust of errors, studies, and the application of theories and new changes to arrive at one specific result. When it ceases to be efficient, politics are then called upon to become a space of creation that allows to give birth to new dynamics. Also, there are a few settings that need as much innovation as politics. This inconsistency arises because innovation is not usually associated with the political sphere in a country where custom and dominant dynamics have restricted the role of institutions, the actions of leaders, and their relationship with citizens to a traditional and limiting vision. 16

4. AFROINNOVA. Whenever the Pacific was talked about in Colombia, it was related to Asia. In fact, the Pacific Basin linked the region with a continent that was little known and with which there was no direct relationship, apart from trade through the port of Buenaventura. When the Spanish Cooperation decided to work together with Visible Hands on a proposal of international scope, the strongest and most obvious link that emerged for the Colombian Pacific was Africa. The African diaspora, which for a very long time seemed like a faint notion to Colombians due to the little direct interaction with the inhabitants of this continent, became a collective inspiration for innovation. Visible Hands created the platform of innovative organizations and leaders of the global African diaspora to make it visible and, in turn, empower local African and Afro-descendant populations. Colombia needed its own vision of the power of the diaspora, and for that it was necessary to look beyond its territory. The search led to the discovery of thousands of organizations working all over the world and an the creation of a community innovation group. The idea was to build a map and then generate inspiration from real experiences and take those experiences to three great meetings in Cartagena, Palenque, QuibdĂł, MedellĂn and Cali. They were profound and transformative encounters: recognizing each other as equals who held the experience struggles and desire to change history and feeling united with each other in Colombian territory were moving for the participants. Regardless of the language or country or of origin of the guests, the talks kept the audience captive. Leaders were invited to carry out processes of racial equity or social transformation from their offices. All of them crossed the continent to speak with their peers in Colombia, determined to make it clear that ethnicity is dynamic, that struggles have changed, as well as the diaspora itself, and that now the new discussions include local initiatives aimed at identity and to the difference that alliances between the diaspora are urgent and enriching, and that the interaction between its members not only broadens horizons, but also connects and transforms. Understanding our connection with Africa allowed us to weave an essential network of the ethnic component of the Afro-Colombian and African populations, which today has expanded beyond them, as well as the global advance that occurs through equity.

5. School of Community Innovation. At the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT), there is a laboratory designed to work in innovative ways with communities on the fringes. From its Department of Urban Studies, in the process of Colab had been developing new innovation programs at the territorial level in dissimilar places in the world, such as in the Bronx or Haiti. When Paula Moreno attended her studies there, she asked the professors to make a laboratory in the Colombian Pacific to create knowledge, support the development of collective leadership, and build capacities for community innovation. In 2014, the project was completed. From there, the Community Innovation School was born, a program that conceives new leaderships based on traditional knowledge, local culture or ancestral knowledge systems, supported by new technologies. Development of ideas and prototypes, innovation from the reconfiguration of the existing community assets were the core of learning praxis (www.innovacioncomunitaria.com). One thing the program made clear from its inception is it would be the Pacific leaders themselves who would co-create the strategies and provide the knowledge, experience, and networks to overcome their own challenges. The overcoming of the problems of the region had to come from the same region, although with the determined collaboration of the School. The presence of internationally renowned tutors and the evaluation of the process led to the incubation of initiatives such as the Chocรณ Robotics School and Puerto Creativo (Buenaventura). Today, in the process of Colab has local coordinators in the Pacific coast with a long term commitment to racial equality in Colombia.

EDUCATE

6. Youth and Peace-Building Fund. Violence and marginalization have deep social causes, but also devastating consequences for the future of the young people living in the areas affected by them. Most have great difficulties in accessing higher education due to lack of economic resources, social discrimination or the high rates of violence that restrict and block their options, and that place them as their main victims in Latin America. But there are many, during this distress, determined to change their history. With them in mind, in 2012 Visible Hands developed a strategic alliance to provide undergraduate study scholarships in Cali and MedellĂn to young leaders of community youth organizations. The underlying idea was to change the discourse that in those violent spaces all professionals came from. Thus, they would lead their own processes. With the support of BBVA, the EAFIT, and ICESI universities, which understood the size of their social responsibility, this program was started, which continues with ICESI in Cali. The growth was mutual. For the universities it implied understanding that they must be universal and that the coexistence with other realities broadened their own perspective. The proximity with the difference generated social integration and articulated new dialogues, in addition to the collaborative processes that had not occurred before. The commitment to academic excellence, in this program, goes hand in hand with training to transform the country. The result was the professionalization of the community youth leaders who today understand something crucial: there is no limit to determine how far they will go. These leaders discuss and build knowledge from a scientific perspective and have assumed that they have a responsibility with their territory and with the construction of peace. Each professional who has graduated from the program is a reference in his family, in his community, and in his organization. Each of them changed the narratives from areas so often marginalized. Today, many are directors of theaters or cultural centers, occupy positions in companies and foundations, and show the reality of social mobility through education.

in academic excellence, but also in self-esteem, empowerment and support from the classroom. Out of the Education for Peace program in the Colombian Pacific, Educapazcífico, was born, a strategy to empower dreams, which gives students the resources to transform their own reality. It was also a tool created to close social gaps and train both teachers and young people in grades 10 and 11. The primary goal of all this grassroots effort was to improve their performance on the Saber state tests, as well as their leadership skills. Previous generations in the Pacific have believed in the power of education to change the course of their lives, and this program offered a real option for the educational option to become a path again. Young people took the tools seriously to change their history of inequity and lack of opportunities, and they took up the challenge. Improving the quality of education for students to access universities has increased the number of college students and, therefore, has triggered leadership and opportunities. Additionally, the push achieved by the program prompted the creation of “Todos Somos Pacífico/We are all the Pacific”, a special line for students from the Pacific in the main government scholarship program. In 2020, in the midst of COVID 19, Visible Hands accompanies schools in their transition to non-presence due to isolation measures. It has also coordinated efforts with the Ministry of National Education so that the Pacific does not increase educational inequality due to lack of access to connectivity. On the contrary, it has turned the current crisis into an opportunity to insert virtual and non-face-to-face education as an additional strength to the ongoing processes.

7. EDUCAPAZCIFICO.

Transformation happens through education and leadership development. Visible Hands considers working with young people and with the natural receptivity of schools to initiate social transformation and leadership from the grassroots. The main obstacle to access to higher education is that the low academic results of the Pacific region prevented most of the students from accessing a university. The commitment of Visible Hands was to create a form of leadership dynamics in young people to turn the school into an ecosystem of transformation, with the support of directors, teachers, and the schools themselves. Thus, they would gain 20

For three years, a total of 92 Afro-Colombian leaders exposed to contexts of vulnerability and members of civil society organizations became the protagonists of a program designed to have more influence in decision-making for change in their communities. It was a commitment to their training, which included accompaniment and academic reinforcement, leadership training and psychosocial support for their life projects, as well as the strengthening of their organizations and tools so that they could generate income, have financial education, and enter the workplace. This profound process implied going to their homes, getting to know their communities and breaking with the concept of exclusion from society or that they themselves had. The workshops were held in various places in the historic center such as the SENA headquarters in front of the Mayor’s Office in the Plaza de la Aduana or in the Historical Museum of Cartagena, a place with memories of the Inquisition. In a segregated Cartagena, black women rewrote history in spaces of pain or exclusion, their role and history. With psychological therapies, a group of personalized tutors, connection with institutions to link them to work and the effective support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the AVINA Foundation, as well as partners such as the Clinton Foundation, Colfuturo and national and international cooperation agencies, their leadership was consolidated and their lives were transformed, and as a result, so were their communities. With this program, Visible Hands began to walk its own transformative path and it would be its only program in the Caribbean. Many of them would also do master’s degrees and participate in regional or exchange workshops. The Pacific and the Caribbean are the strength of ethnicity in Colombia, and they meet strategically and inevitably.

TO BE A WOMAN

8. Development Management Training Program for Afro-Colombian Leaders.

In most of the country’s territories, women lead social processes and assume the role of leaders. Visible Hands posed a question: “How to allow these women to participate in spaces of power so that they could have an impact, and how to boost their access to the labor market to improve their quality of life?” The result was this program, based in Cartagena and the north of Bolívar, which launched the Visible Hands programs, with a clear focus on female empowerment. Their stories touched the lives of all, and the contribution of the program transformed the lives of dozens of these women. 21

9. Innovation Girls - Chocó Robotics School.

Talking about Chocó and innovation may seem, in the opinion of the majority, contradictory. That mental breakdown, precisely, was what the Chocó Robotics School wanted, which incubated the idea in 2016 and began its operation in 2017, focused on the vision that talking about Chocó and technology was natural and possible. In addition, there was another incentive: to make it clear that the talents of boys, girls and women were only an exercise in power. In other words, it was only necessary to nurture their skills and put them in perspective, both nationally and internationally. With these premises and a strong push, the School of Robotics managed to occupy prominent places at the national and international level and has trained, to date, more than 1,000 children and young people in the Department of Chocó. Visible Hands has accompanied the ideas of this talent from Chocó through programs such as the School of Community Innovation with MIT and MingaLab. However, it is no longer just an accompanying exercise. The School invited the corporation to be a partner in the development of an empowerment initiative for young women in science, technology and innovation. Today, from its classrooms emerge women leaders in the incubation of solutions for the community from their technical knowledge of programming and their training in leadership. In addition, this initiative especially promotes the participation of women with the aim of reducing the gender inequality gap and facilitating their access to quality training and, of course, to management positions in sicence, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). From June 2018 to January 2020, four versions of the Innovation Girls program have been carried out, which this year will reach 100 female graduates, thanks to the contributions of individual donors.

MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT

10. DALE (Autonomous Development - Effective Leadership).

There is a moment in the DALE program that many consider the hardest moment of all: that is when each young participant walks in front of the mirror and engages an intimate dialogue with himself. There he faces his own reflection and understands the difference between what he wants to communicate and what he communicates to those around him. That moment in which he stands in front of himself, and before a group of equals, leads each participant to understand that esteem is earned, and courage is forged. An additional revelation emerges all are in a process of convincing the individual power of each one of them. After the mirror, aware of their strengths and weaknesses, they collaborate to generate vital transformations in themselves and in their environment. This work of deep humanity spreads through each group participating in the DALE program, conceived so that youth leaders develop their life project, gain critical thinking, gain knowledge about peace and post-conflict, deepen their knowledge on youth issues. and peace building, cultural management, project management, communication, management and innovation, and awaken to the possibilities of carrying out your project, hand in hand with high-level tutors. They have been targeted by this effective leadership program that emerged to allow those who had developed a concept and landed it to see the seed they had sown flourish and turn it into a concrete and sustainable possibility. With practical and basic tools, each young person graduates from the program with the elements to change their own being, carry out their project and become part of collaboration networks. By 2020, DALE has graduated more than 10 cohorts in Cali, MedellĂn, QuibdĂł, Buenaventura and Tumaco, and has reached more than 500 young people. All of them gained in innovation and leadership. As the very name of the project suggests, DALE pushed them forward.

11. Mingalab. Visible Hands proposed the Minglab laboratory to provide support to the participants of innovation projects that were in the beginning stages. Visible Hands implemented this law while always thinking about the effect it can have on the participants and how it can propel them into the future. That meant that those leaders in established organizations who had gone through the process of developing concepts and landing their ideas, but still needed a definitive accolade, could count on a real strengthening of their life.

This was the main goal from the beginning of the laboratory of social innovation for peace and strengthening of organizations. The idea was to provide concrete and definitive support to strengthen solid initiatives. The impact was enormous in the process of transformation of the Pacific. Through the lab MingaLab, participants were able to learn from other experiences and nourish themselves from them, and gain strength in issues that they did not master, such as financial support, brand registrations, and even having the tools to operate . Since 2016, the initiative has impacted more than 70 organizations in the Colombian Pacific in Quibdó, Tumaco, Buenaventura, and Cali. During this period, the lab has supported strategic communication, administrative, and programmatic decisions, and has strengthened people linked to the project through their training and strategic relationship. Leaders from different cities have connected with leaders in their region to understand their business model and have broken the barriers of distance to link as a single region. MingaLab is, in short, the space for the concretion of ideas so that they take shape, including direct investment in projects and talents. From there, the Young Creators of Chocó project, Pacific Dance, Somos Arte, Tura HipHop, the Chocoan Women’s Youth Network, Chocó Robotics School, This is my Story, Canalón School, among others, who received support in MingaLab, have gained strength… The program’s transformation ecosystem has been so decisive for several organizations that, outside the platform, several of them have make connections to generate new dynamics and spaces, beyond physical borders.

12. Power Pacific School of Economics. In today’s context, power is unattainable if it does not consider economic dynamics. The less idealistic side of the social commitment seems to be the economy, but having a complete knowledge of the system that supports and generates the great decisions, knowing how to obtain resources, manage them, obtain financing, and have the conceptual bases of current economic games and the role of government entities and multilateral agencies, among others, is crucial for social transformation to be possible. To achieve lasting change, every leader must have a full comprehension of economics. In 2015, the dean of the Faculty of Economics and the Universidad de los Andes, Juan Camilo Cárdenas, spoke on this topic to a group of over 60 fellow professors of economics from across the Pacific. Of all the professors there, none were from the Pacific region. Why is that? What does this mean? Did the absence of economists from the Pacific region have an adverse effect in the development of the region? To reverse the noticeable gap, Cárdenas worked together with Visible Hands in the implementation of a training program that is linked to the University of Los Andes, in order to develop capacities and expand economic knowledge in the Pacific. In his proposal, he added conceptual bases, practical experiences, and discussions with front-line experts from the government, think tanks, and multilateral agencies. The bet was not only to learn, but to develop in the more than 150 students the ability to analyze the Pacific. Furthermore, the basic proposal was that the region’s leaders take ownership of the economy in their context, have access to data to design appropriate development programs and plans, technical tools for analysis, and be critical thinkers of the processes that are to be carried out. But, above all, that they understand that the Pacific, with its peculiarities, can provide effective answers to current problems based on its own wealth. Culture, collective land ownership, biodiversity, and human networks are assets that can change the extractive economy for a sustainable economy. The school organized a production structure based on the economic potential from the region gave results and generated a Pacific seedbed in the Andes. In fact, at both graduation ceremonies there were more Afro-colombian faces than ever before. Thanks to the contribution of the School, the Pacific now thinks of power from an economic dynamic and adds from the community to the community. This has multiplied the impact of the bet, to the point that the University of Los Andes set up a Pacific Agenda that today opens the doors to more than 100 undergraduate students in the region and works to open the master’s degree process.

in culture, power in biodiversity, power in resistance, and power in community union, as well as power in human capacity and the reach of its leaders. The history of the Pacific is the history of 1,300 kms of coastline, inhabited by 1.6 million talented people, without the right conditions to develop and demonstrate their enormous potential; with the youngest population in the country, with 35.8% of its people between 15 and 34 years old; a territory that looks towards Asian markets and the American West, in addition to being linked with Chile, Peru, and Mexico through the Pacific Alliance, and with Africa due to its Afro-descendant population. To have the ability to take advantage of this competitive advantage, the Pacific needs a managerial elite that takes advantage of this reality, a group that stops waiting for actions from the central government and promotes its own development. The Potencia Pacífico Fund will give 200 entrepreneurial leaders the opportunity to obtain postgraduate scholarships in areas essential for development between 2020 and 2030. The Fund will focus on developing managerial capacities in cultural management, communications, development management, business creation, and many others. In a universal way, it will promote capacities in economics and technology. The Potencia Pacífico generation will oversee dreaming and building a creative and productive Pacific, which is the center and not the periphery. Promoting cultural talent, creating a company and the development agenda unites all aspects in one. This gave rise to the master’s program in Management and Cultural and Audiovisual Production, as well as the master’s degree in Business Creation and the master’s degree in Management and Development Practice. These first three master’s degrees, the come from a Fund designed for this new decade, saw the light of 130 leaders. By 2030, it should reach 200 scholarship holders and position the Pacific as a power that transcends the cultural and becomes an exercise in sustainable development and growth.

13. Potencia Pacífico (Pacific Power) – Master degrees in Cultural and Audiovisual Management and Production, Development Management and Business Creation.

After gaining power, what comes next? This type of reflection arose almost a decade after working to consolidate the Poder Pacífico and understanding that it was time to go further to continue challenging the structures imposed in the regions, rethinking the country, and building it from the margins. After gaining power, it was clear, there must be empowerment. The Visible Hands concluded that power, as a word, means all the possibilities that an opportunity held, and everything that can be expanded and converted. Visible Hands had understood this throughout its previous process, that the Pacific contains power 26

With the support of the University of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, the ICESI University, and the University of Los Andes, and the contributions of the Ford Foundation, Sura Foundation, and USAID, financial support is provided to 130 leaders of the region with the intention to change the narratives of backwardness and isolation for those of a power through its main asset: culture. The program will nurture a network of leaders, especially women, who will influence the ecosystem of institutions at all levels through their own development model. This process will think about new futures and an advocacy agenda from, by and for the Colombian Pacific coast.

TO MAKE CONNECTIONS

14. Internship Program â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Pacific Connection. In the chain of transformation through education and leadership, training there was a crucial link to formal learning in pure practice. An occurrence could not be generated if a means was not created to access formal workspaces. That missing crossroad was necessary for the path to fully empowering leaders to be successful. Visible Hands had this connection clear from its early years and in 2013, opted for the formation and connection of the leaderships of the Pacific region, within its Pacific Power strategy. Finally, in 2016, the Internship Program - Pacific Connection was launched, designed to strengthen the capacities of leaders in the region. Its approach aimed at the empowerment of leaders through professional, practical, and real experience. The Visible Hands network of contacts made it possible to establish connections and make a presence in friendly institutions. That contact with reality expanded the world of great leaders, who until that moment had not been able to access a job alternative. The initial prevention of the companies towards the professional practitioners coming from the Pacific was altered when they saw their capacity and knowledge of the territory. Their presence in the places of incidence also generated new relationships and changed the pre-established social dynamics. By weaving that web, Visible Hands connected opportunities with capabilities. But furthermore, it created new links and strengthened the leadership of the young graduates by allowing them to enter the labor market. Everyone won: the young people won, who enriched their talents, and the entities receiving that talent, through the effective inclusion of these leaders.

There are initiatives and individuals leading transformations at all levels and in all sectors in Africa and its diaspora. It would be important for these positive examples to have the same visibility and resonance as the negative examples to inspire, promote and develop solutions in Afro-descendant communities outside and within Africa. Susana Edjang

15. Pacific Connection. Networks are only effective when their members are

interconnected. In the Pacific, unlike other regions in the country, contains geographical distances that seem, at times, insurmountable. The biodiversity and conditions of the region make physical encounters complex, unless there is an option that allows its inhabitants to travel to meet, discuss, and connect with each other. When physical encounters occur, speaking of the region ceases to be a discourse to become a fact. Pacific Connection was born to be that knot that unites the leaders when they meet, and so that when they meet, they also recognized and generated dynamics around collective agendas. This community conversation, in which key thoughts are discussed, and in which tutors and leaders learn and relearn from the experiences of the region, is Visible Hands commitment to reinvent itself from collective power. The Pacific, in this period, has learned that if it integrates knowledge and experiences, these encounters will seal learning and enrich the diversity of the region. Since 2013, the Pacific Connection workshops and meetings have allowed more than 1,500 leaders to reflect on their dynamics and for new initiatives to emerge. The leaders have used spaces for listening and mass thinking to be able to generate effective advocacy platforms and share the Peaceful Thinking: by weaving encounters the future is woven.

Weaving encounters weaves the future

their role, form a network of interpreters in the Pacific that would exalt their work, establish them as peace builders and, above all, give them the relevance they deserve. Empowering is also making people see themselves. And that is the goal that Pacific Song sought. The singers understood, during this process, that they were visible voices and hands, and that their contribution was awe-inspiring to unite and maintain the ancestral legacy of their territory. At the same time, the Pacific understood that the region sings to heal itself. Paula Moreno herself knew it when she asked the leaders of the Pacific, during the Peace Process, how they overcame mental health in their territory and they took out their guasá to start singing, in response. The exchange of experiences allowed them to recognize themselves, discover their musical and sociocultural potentialities, and learn about the importance of their role thanks to the leadership of the music producer Julián Gallo, the teacher Nidia Góngora and the researcher Ana María Arango. The program focused on nurturing experiences to the participants and generating appreciation for their role as leaders and women and ended up giving rise to unified voices. By broadening the possibilities of the participants, many of them were allowed to change their own lives in their family environment and overcome extreme situations, such as intrafamily violence, in addition to valuing their own trade. Connected through the Cantadoras Network, this project directed by the Nariñense Culture Foundation for the rescue of Canapavi values and identity (strengthened through the MingaLab), served as a model to rethink other forms of cultural management for organizations with complex characteristics and asymmetric. Their greatest achievement, however, was allowing them to be a unified and connected voice, capable of addressing peacebuilding through their resilient processes and ancestral knowledge.

NARRATIVE

Pacific Song was present in spaces such as the Petronio Álvarez Festival, where in addition to making itself visible with its spiritual and powerful musical presentation, it presented the sound memory that was consolidated in a record production of more than 10 songs inspired by peace, resilience, and resistance.

16. Pacific Song. The Pacific sings, either to drive away sorrows, celebrate life, say

goodbye to those who are leaving, or to welcome those who arrive. The Pacific is a land of voices and singers, but more specifically the voices of women most often are the loudest. They are the midwives, those who transmit the word and give support, those of wisdom, charm, reproach, and sweetness. Their voices are tradition and culture of the Pacific. Their voices, too, deserves to be heard and is worth being broadcast loud and strong. Thinking about those voices, this program was created with a clear gender focus to rethink 29

what people read, encourage reading, and generate interconnected laboratories: The Black Narratives, The African Literature, and now The Afrodiasporic Narratives. The Laboratory of Black Narratives was a project to promote reading and writing as an empowerment strategy, from a network of reading and writing circles in the Pacific, Medellín, Cartagena, and Bogotá. It introduced different institutions and organizations to generate new stories about leadership and advocacy processes by reading the book, The Power of the Invisible by Paula Moreno, and acquiring tools in literacy. The African Literature Laboratory connected with the literature of the diaspora to generate reflections that will help to question their own themes, such as when they read A Man of the People by the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, and generated a psychological and sociological analysis of generational changes and politics. In 2020, the book, In my Skin by Lázaro Ramos, Brazilian actor, filmmaker, producer, and writer, will be the next content to energize the more than 100 reading circles in the Pacific, Medellín, Bogotá, and Cartagena. These laboratories are more trainings in humanity than other workshops. Inspiration and possibilities are spread here, so that new generations understand that it is time to read, learn, and tell their own life stories. In 2020, the first anthology of this process will be published. During the isolation by Covid-19, Visible Hands created a virtual space for creation and reflections to empower Narratives of resistance. This became the virtual component of the “Come, I Will Read to You,” strategy, in which not only written narratives are integrated, but also sound and audiovisual ones.

17. Come, I Will Read to You (Narrative Laboratory).

The Pacific Power needs the word to be, the word seals the pacts, allows the transmission of knowledge, and is the link that connects cultures and peoples. Each language is a culture and each people use speaking and writing to transmit its legacy and knowledge. Therefore, preserving it is crucial to preserve the inheritance, but at the same time, it is powerful when it comes to modifying notions of power and changing existing imaginary. Innate leaders need the word to convince and empower themselves. To do so, however, they must feed on it and read to gain tools that broaden their criteria. This is critical in the Pacific, where the book ecosystem is precarious and reading comprehension is often a shortcoming. With this in mind, the Power Pacific Narrative program emerged, a commitment to understand 30

TIMELINE OF VARIOUS PROGRAMS

2013

There are dozens of words that define Visible Hands. One of them is Journey. This is the journey or path traced for change, traveled through programs that have affected the lives of at least 4,000 leaders in the country:

2010 • Development Management for Afro-descendant Leaders (design stage)

2011

2012

• Development Management for Afro-descendant Leaders (design stage)

2016 • Youth and Peace Building Fund, I (2012 - 2016) • High Government School III: Buenaventura and Quibdó • Afroinnnova I • Pacific Connection Internship • CantoPazcifico • MingaLab I • School of Community Innovation II • EducaPazcífico • First Pacific Education Fair: Quibdó, Buenaventura, and Tumaco • Laboratory of Political Innovation for Peace.

• Development Management for Afro-descendant Leaders version I – 2012 • DALE, Quibdó I and Cali • Youth and Peace Building Fund, I (2012 2016)

2017 • Educapacific III • High Government School III: Buenaventura and Quibdó • Pacific Connection Workshop IV • School of Economics II • Afroinnova I • MingaLab II

2014

• Development Management for Afro-descendant Leaders version II - 2013 • LIDERA (Afro-Colombian Leadership) Washington D.C. • DALE Medellín I • Pacific Power Mastery Cohort I • Pacific Connection I and II Regional Workshop • High Government School I: Quibdó and Cali • Youth and Peace Building Fund, I (2012 - 2016)

• Educapacific, Phase IV • Second Pacific Education Fair (Quibdó, Buenaventura, and Tumaco) • DALE Pazcífico: Quibdó, Buenaventura, and Tumaco • Innovation Girls II • Afroinnova II • MingaLab III

• Development Management for Afro-descendant Leaders version III - 2014 • Youth and Peace Building Fund, I (2012 - 2016) • DALE, Buenaventura I and Quibdó II • Pacific Connection Workshop III • High Government School II: Buenaventura, Cali, Quibdó, and Tumaco • School of Community Innovation

2019

2018 • • • • • •

• •

2015

MingaLab IV Laboratory of Black Narratives Laboratory of African Literature DALE Future: Quibdó, Buenaventura, and Tumaco Innovation Girls III Pacific Connection Workshops: Regional Meetings 2019: Quibdó, Buenaventura, and Tumaco 2nd Youth and Peace Building Fund Power Pacific - Master’s Degree in Management and Cultural and Audiovisual

• Youth and Peace Building Fund, I (2012 - 2016) • DALE Pazcífico: Buenaventura, Quibdó, and Tumaco • School of Economics I • MingaLab I • Afroinnova I • Educapacific I

2020 • Pacific Power - master’s in management and development practice • Educapacific V • MingaLab V • Laboratory of Afro-diasporic Narratives • Innovation Girls IV • DALE Pazcífico: Buenaventura, Cali (North of Cauca), Quibdó, and Tumaco • DALE Cultural • Pacific Power - master’s in business administration and (Master’s program in Development Practice (MDP)

“Deconstruct those discourses and narratives that have constituted the sustenance so that we justify the unjustifiable. Take up the cause of those considered the others: the impoverished, not the poor; the ones who cannot see us, not the invisible; the marginalized groups looking for success, not the sidelined, in order to change imaginaries that invite us to move out of our comfort zone and share our privileges… I invite you to do so.” Words by Deisy Elena Bermúdez Keynote speech of the II Cohort graduation of the Pacific Power Master’s Degree. December 2017, EAFIT University (Medellín)

TRANSFORMATION STORIES There are two adages that are intertwined with all its complexity in the Colombian Pacific: the first affirms that everyone is the architect of their own life; the second, that the environment helps to determine the individual. Both factors collide with a reality: in Colombia, far from the center, opportunities have historically been infrequent. However, and precisely due to the contradiction of living in invisible environments that have made the conditions of the inhabitants and their municipalities more difficult, the people who empower themselves in the regions and fully assume that they are architects of their own lives gain value for their community and their leadership make them transformative elements. People with that spirit understand that they can first transform their lives and, incidentally, their environment. For ten years, Visible Hands has promoted leadership in regions in conditions of exclusion because it has understood that by demonstrating the leadership vocation of its citizens it is possible to generate the same effect of concentric waves in a lake: each leader empowered and With clear power tools, he expands his knowledge to others and generates expansive change processes.

The leadership routes show the fruitful meeting of the diversities in that network of connections so that it is possible that, at the same time, a leader from the Pacific emerges and, from the other, a leader of a national process in the political center of the country. The transformation does not occur from one side only: its fruits sprout for a humanity that transcends from a “you and us” to a “us”. In these years, these have been some of the bridges that Visible Hands has built. Their stories are not individual, nor do they come from only one side. On the contrary, they are the stories of a network that is woven with a series of deeply human bonds. There is no lie when saying that there are hundreds of stories like these. These are just a few examples. Each new member of this network expands and replaces the worn-out paradigms of the old and obsolete thought, just as when a sunrise renews the previous one or when nature recovers the ground lost by logging and recreates its splendor again. Or better, when the human consciousness gains way to unconsciousness, opens its eyes and rediscovers itself after its blindness.

The leadership routes are linked to the way they have transformed their thinking. The following leaders have learned to see the territory, themselves, and the lives of others in a new way, and that is why all the titles include synonyms of these processes of evolution and renewal. All are generators of ecosystems of transformation, or basic social conditions that allow the birth of collective, innovative solutions consistent with the challenges faced by the region. These ecosystems, after a decade, are beginning to cease to be the exception and are beginning to become a constant. 33

FOR A RURAL, AGROINDUSTRIAL, AND SUSTAINABLE PACIFIC

in the Imbilí Carretera community, a town in Tumaco a few kilometers from the border with Ecuador. It was on the banks of the Mira River where she first learned and understood the feeling of her region before traveling to attend high school in Bogotá. When she finished it, she packed his bags and set out on a trip to Buenaventura to study agronomy. In those processes of change of city and life, she discovered that she was born to learn and share knowledge and that, although the Pacific was one, its dynamics could not be seen as a whole. She participated in the call for the DALE program until she was elected. Her own foundation, Steps that transform, led her to be part of the MingaLab program and later the School of Government; Then she was selected to do her Pacific Connection internship program at the Bank of the Republic Center for Economic and Regional Research in Cartagena and began working with Visible Hands, supporting the first Afroinnova meeting in this same city. This would take her in a few months to start her professional life, linked to Visible Hands as coordinator of the Education for Peace - Educapazcífico program and, later, as coordinator and manager of the DALE program.

MAITÉ ROSALES

(Imbilí, Rural area of Tumaco), 28 years old Research Projects Professional at the Vice-Rector’s Office for Research and Creation of the Universidad de Los Andes. Leadership Route: DALE 2015, Pacific Connection Regional Workshop 2015, School of Government “Pacific Power” 2016, MingaLab I 2016, Pacific Connection Internship Bank of the Republic 2016; Afroinnova Volunteer (2016-2018) and Educapazcific Coordinator (Visible Hands 2016-2018), MingaLab V (2019). Redescar Pacífico Advisor (Universidad de Los Andes)

“Once they told me: ‘To you, we give the very least, but with what they do give us, we build.’”

Ecosystem of Transformation: Universidad del Pacífico, Steps that transform (Organization that creates in DALE MingaLab I), Center for Regional Studies of the Bank of the Republic, Visible Hands, Universidad de Los Andes, Fundación Alto Mira and Frontera - Imbilí Carretera (MingaLab 2018 -2019). Columnist from: La Silla Pacifico

However, it was her experiences that changed her deeply. One of her expierences led her to accompany the transformation processes of her region through the EducaPazcífico program, which benefited more than 500 teachers. There she understood the needs of the Pacific region as she had never done before; She worked hand in hand with 20 educational institutions, spoke with rectors, teachers, and students, and was clear about what was missing and what should be strengthened: rather than strengthening the spirit of young people, it was crucial to allow them to have life projects and give them the tools to turn.

Maité Rosales comes from the deep south: she was born

It was in this process where she learned about the

resilience of the territories. She learned to admire the ability of its inhabitants to change paradigms and even teach others, as when she witnessed cases in Tumaco and Quibdó of adolescent siblings who lived alone because they came from rural areas, but took care of each other and served as guardians of one another while still attending classes, because they were committed to finishing their studies and improving their living conditions. The same thing happened with the teachers: many acted as psychocounselors because they went beyond their basic responsibility and took on the challenge of betting on young people. Despite trying for years without success, they remained determined to achieve transformation. “The Pacific allows you to learn from it. From this capacity to transform and adapt, the country has a lot to learn from this region,” says Maité. “Once they told me: ‘To you, we give the very least, but with what they do give us, let’s go building.’ Despite everything that has happened to us, we continue to resist systematic and structural exclusion and have been transformed. If we don’t have the tools, we use what we have at hand to achieve our goal.” Maité Rosales listened to teachers, parents, and young people in the life project and academic training workshops and learned different realities from those of her native region to understand how to generate a profound transformation. Visible Hands became for her the best way to connect with these realities and modify them. “In the Pacific there are essential leaders,” she says, as a certainty. She is one of those leaders. Linked since adolescence to hotbeds of research, organizations or as a student representative, she only had to empower herself and acquire tools to strengthen her leadership. Now that you have them, you empower others. Today she is one of the few Afro-descendant and Pacific professionals at the Universidad de Los Andes or who channels hope through the Imbilí Carretera Library, the only space for children and young people outside of School. How did Maite get to the Universidad de Los Andes? In one of those visible processes, she met Bart Van Hoof at DALE, later at Visible Hands, and that tutor who decided

to undertake an agro-industrial transformation process in Buenaventura chose her as coordinator. Together they now weave the web and with it, the effective purpose of transformation.

He learned to know the difference “between tantrums and gossip”, to understand that “the disconnection of the rest of the country with the Pacific”, and he focused on seeing this as an opportunity, a force of power and action, but he also approached the territory with humility and fascination.

BART VAN HOOF

(Esbeek, Netherlands), 49 years old Professor at the Faculty of Business Administration from the University of Los Andes

“Visible Hands is much more than cooperation: we are the engine of transformation, both personal and community”

Leadership Route: Professor at the University of Los Andes. Member of the Board of Directors of Visible Hands. He has been a tutor in all DALE and MingaLab, he is now a member of the academic committee of the Pacific cohort of the master’s in management and development practice. Transformation Ecosystem: Visible Hands, Redescar, Universidad de Los Andes School of Administration. He knew the Pacific long before millions of Colombians. This European had not been in the country for three years when he went to visit him for the first time. It was true love that wanted his wife to be from Quibdó, his late fatherin-law from Istmina and his mother-in-law from Condoto. Bart Van Hoof, who came from the southernmost part of the Dutch region of Noord-Brabant, learned about the flavors of the Pacific, its culture and traditions in depth, became a regular visitor to Cali and became part of a Chocoana family that believed in change in the Pacific. He felt committed to the region. However, it was only when he encountered Visible Hands that he really understood. He understood thoroughly. Bart talks about his origins and remembers coming from a “little town with thirty thousand pigs, three thousand cows, and a thousand people fifteen kilometers from Tilburg, on the border with Belgium.” He was one of the first of his people to study at a university, and his innate curiosity led him to travel the world, from India to Nepal, to Brazil. Those trips helped him to understand that the essence of human beings is the same everywhere: in Holland taxi drivers drive Mercedes Benz; in India, rikshas and in Bogotá, Dodge and Chevrolet, which gave off a strong smell of gasoline. “But their concerns and their pursuits were the same,” he says.

BART VAN HOOF

He had studied industrial engineering and his dream was to work outside of Europe. Colombia, to his happiness, was his destiny. His fascination for environmental sustainability allowed him to understand from his work at the University of Los Andes what development meant on this side of the world, as well as the economic differences that marked us, the impressive local nature and the national way of relating to each other. Linked to the Faculty of Administration, he dedicated himself to designing master’s degrees, such as environmental management, in 2006, where he met Paula Moreno. The two shared developmental visions.

“Visible Hands is much more than cooperation: we are the engine of a transformation,both personal and community,” he notes. For Bart there is something additional: “The community achieves transformation. That is true power,” says this Dutchman who turns 23 in the country, and who has returned at least forty times to his hometown to take care of his roots, just the same as reinforcing the ‘visible hands’ on his own territory in Colombia. “A Dutchman who can help strengthen the connection of identity in the Pacific with the rest of the country is ironic, but fabulous,” he says, and smiles.

Then they would work together on another master’s degree and finally, when the Visible Hands project was already underway, he participated in the design and development of DALE. Determined to change the perspective of young people in invisible regions, he set out to learn about the history of the Pacific and its problems. He went to Quibdó, Tumaco, and Buenaventura with the impetus of a historian, to delve into the region. He spoke with its inhabitants and tracked documents in order to change the perspective of the inhabitants about their own territory.

would be impossible to successfully carry out organizational processes such as that of the Yurumanguí River in Buenaventura. “We were weak in generating sustainable actions to improve the living conditions of the communities.”

THE FIGURES FOR THE TRANSFORMATION ÁLVARO ARROYO

(Yurumanguí, Buenaventura), 29 years-old Visible Hands coordinator, Associate Researcher at Universidad de Los Andes

“Visible Hands generates personal and collective capacities and transformations. I decided work with them because I want to contribute to other young people so that they receive what I have received “

Leadership route: DALE 2013, School of Government 2013, School of Economics 2015, Internship Pacific Connection Chamber of Commerce of Cali 2016, Master of Government and Public Policies Pacific Power University Icesi (2016-2018), Mel King MIT CoLab Scholar. Transformation Ecosystem: Río Yurumanguí Community Council, Black Communities Process, Buenaventura Civic Stop Committee, Buenaventura Mayor’s Office, Universidad de Los Andes, Visible Hands, MIT CoLab. Columnist at La Silla Pacifico He was born in the Yurumanguí River, a place in the middle of the thick jungle where the river is synonymous with generosity and the landscape is intensely green. There, however, the wealth and neglect are such that violence raged around the area and still lingers. At age 11, Álvaro, along with three thousand other people, had to flee after the massacre in the “El Firme” area in 2001. The victims of this forced displacement also lost almost 55,000 hectares at the hands of a mining company, in a territory protected by the Law of Black Communities. The community began an intense struggle for years to regain their rights. In 2005, Álvaro, still an adolescent, felt his leadership boil in his blood and began to participate in the organizational and community process of the Yurumanguí River Community Council that claimed his territory. When he graduated from high school, he moved to the urban area of Buenaventura, where he participated in organizational processes through the regional office of the Black Communities Process. That community push demonstrated its power and achieved the land restitution sentence for Yurumanguí. 36

ÁLVARO ARROYO

Such a combative spirit of justice had permeated Álvaro Arroyo very deeply. His innate leadership led him to study Foreign Trade at the Universidad del Valle. A year after graduating he was selected for the DALE program and then for the Visible Hands School of Government. He started with Visible Hands at the age of 26, when he was youth coordinator of the Yurumanguí River Community Council. He also worked as Advisor to the Buenaventura Mayor’s Office, as coordinator of the Office of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Tourism in the Buenaventura District and as ACDI VOCA Coordinator. When he was already working with DANE, he joined the Power Pacific School of Economics and later, the Master’s in Government. In the process of personal growth, he ended up becoming the coordinator of the Power Pacific School of Economics. Álvaro understood from a young age that it was necessary to improve his knowledge in economics when he saw that without the productive economic component it

He studied economics and in return he obtained more than that: he gained clarity about the scope of his social leadership, expanded his personal relationships and understood his potential to generate transformations. One of those empowering relationships was established with a tutor from Visible Hands, Juan Camilo Cárdenas, current dean of the Faculty of Economics at the Universidad de Los Andes and with whom he would co-design the “Poder Pacífico” School of Economics. “It was beautiful,” he says. “Now I see all that we still have to do to overcome the historical exclusions that we live in territories like the Pacific.” He also understands how it is possible to interconnect any territory with the rest of the country and the world because they are all integrated into the same dynamics, although they have different local needs that must be respected. “Visible Hands generates personal and collective capacities and transformations. I decided to work with them because I want to contribute to other young people so that they receive what I have received ”, he finishes, generously, with the same kindness that the river in front of which he was born gave him.

LEYNER MOSQUERA

“To do this, data and statistics that fuel local discussion are crucial,” he adds. Leyner finished his master’s degree and gained prominence to the point of publishing a column in Semana, where he writes about Pacific development issues with the intention of closing the gap from the local level.

(Quibdó, Chocó), 28 years old Public Policy Evaluator at the National Population Department Leadership Route: Pacific Power School of Economics Transformation ecosystem: Universidad de Los Andes (Pacific Seedbed and School of Economics), National Planning, Semana Magazine Columnist How His Vision Has Changed: Leyner Mosquera says it with emphasis and manages to move when he expresses it. “Now I understand the contradictions of cities like Cali and Buenaventura, Tumaco and Pasto, or the Pacific coast with the Andean zone; it’s thought and ideological gaps; their characteristics so different from each other. Now I understand the region from an economic and pragmatic point of view, in all its dimensions. Understanding is the first step to transform,” asserts this young man, who has experienced the transformation process in his own life. “In my case, the change has been profound. Before, I had individual ambitions, such as the urgency of training, but there is a differentiating factor when one understands the context of true transformations: it is necessary to have a collective thought to achieve them, ” explains Leyner, a production engineer born in Quibdó and Master in Applied Economics from the Universidad de los Andes. Although life insisted on showing him one obstacle after another, Leyner insisted on getting ahead. While still studying in Medellín, listening to his corporate finance professor prompted him to take the data path and try studying in Los Andes. He was presented to the Visible Hands call for the II Pacific School of Economics and passed the application process. He was the only one with an engineering background intending to work on investment projects in rural development and his profile proved invaluable. His willingness to learn was absolute. When he was elected, although he lived in Bogotá, he made the commitment to travel once a month, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in order to learn. He assumed the financial cost

For him, the people of the regions should be involved in relevant national discussions. If not, it will be difficult for them to get ahead and close gaps. Now he works in the evaluation of public policies, a position that is generally carried out by people from the interior, but which must consider the local context. “In the Semillero Pacífico and with Los Andes, my life changed. My personal and academic interests were aligned with the collective as a leader of the Pacific,” he says, with satisfaction. Throughout this process, he had a great mentor: the current dean of Economy, Juan Camilo Cárdenas, another visible hand. LEYNER MOSQUERA

and was passionate about the workshops. His graduate work on Acandí included peculiarities about the economy of this municipality, with precise data that allowed him to understand the importance of clear diagnoses. Also, there he gained in leadership.

“If one adds the forces, voices and initiatives of a region, if one corrects the previous errors and adds values, in addition to trying to do things differently, transformation comes “ Finally, he acquired tools that considered collective thinking to generate a real impact on society. “If you add forces, voices and initiatives from a region, if you correct previous mistakes and add values, in addition to trying to do things differently, transformation comes,” he says with confidence. And it is happening in his environment he increasingly identifies more leaders to whom to turn to make decisions. Thinking collectively not only empowers young people but also the community and local leaders.

JUAN CAMILO CÁRDENAS

(Bogotá), 54 years old Dean of Economics and Professor at the Universidad de Los Andes Leadership Route: Faculty of Economics of the Universidad de Los Andes – School of Economics of the Pacific Ecosystem of Transformation: Universidad de Los Andes, Portfolio Columnist and La Silla Vacía. He met Paula Moreno when he was invited to the Pacific Connection Workshop in Cali (2014) with more than 300 leaders. Subsequently, the University of Los Andes created the Semillero del Pacífico, under her leadership, with the motto “more Pacific in the Andes.” From that moment they met at different points of life for common interests and because both worked with the same focus: to strengthen leadership and human capital on the Pacific coast. The link was strengthened when Paula Moreno offered her support, and the resources, to create the first Pacific School of Economics, in a collaboration between the university’s School of Economics and Visible Hands. The idea was wonderful and, at the same time, ambitious: to bring professorships and short courses for leaders of the 37

The corporation continues to summon diverse voices and efforts, and slowly builds a network of young leaders who participate in business and politics in the region.

JUAN CAMILO CÁRDENAS

region, since there was no faculty of economics in any of the main cities on the coast. Two Schools, in 2016 and 2017, served the North Pacific (Quibdó) and South Pacific (Cali) nodes. The School was so successful that it led to many more conversations about the importance of understanding the most appropriate development models for the region. And it laid more foundations for change and the leap to new models, built locally. Throughout the process, this industrial engineer with a doctorate in environmental economics, who already had as a concern to promote cooperation between individuals and the solution of social dilemmas in an equitable and sustainable way, had come to understand the greater importance of Visible Hands in the regions: “It became a school and an example for me for its commitment to a population marginalized from development that the center of the country had received. Thanks to their drive, the corporation continues to summon different voices and efforts, and slowly builds a network of young leaders who participate in business and politics in the region. We maintain a permanent relationship of collaboration and joint efforts with all of them,” the researcher makes clear. 38

Today, Juan Camilo Cárdenas is convinced that the greatest learning he has gained, personally, is to modify the discourses, teachings and thinking of the center to the logic of the Pacific. “These contacts and projects help me to maintain a humble and horizontal tone in conversation with leaders and with the challenges faced by the region . In addition, we have been able to bring other voices to the university.” Those voices will change relations of cooperation, trust and social construction shortly. Or rather they are already doing it.

THE POWER TO MODIFY DESTINY SANDRA PATRICIA PALACIOS MORENO

(Pie de Pató, Chocó), 33 years old Research assistant of the CEAF Afrodiasporic Study Center Leadership Route: Afro-diasporic Study Center CEAF Ecosystem of Transformation: [Solidarilabs] Afrocolombia women’s network, Center for Afrodiasporic Studies - Icesi University For as long as she can remember, Sandra has loved community work. That inclination was not accidental: Sandra Patricia was born in Pie de Pató, the head of the Alto Baudo municipality, and from her first years of life she understood how Chocoan communities came together to discuss solutions to their pressing needs and to claim for their rights. Her family worked hard and were very

SANDRA PATRICIA PALACIOS MORENO

humble. She believed like many in the region in the power of education. Thanks to this, she studied high school in the village of Puerto Echeverry and studied Business Administration at the Technological University of Chocó Diego Luis Córdoba. But community work remained her natural calling. In fact, in 2013 she formed the Association of Women Producers of Batatal, made up of 28 women dedicated to the production of brown sugar “panela” and sugar cane honey. Aware that she lacked tools, she applied to the call for the School of Economics in 2015. Her persistence led her to take the step to become one of practitioners of the Pacific Connection program, at the Icesi University, in Cali, in the Center of Afro-diasporic Studies. There she understood her calling to help and support community causes, and, incidentally, she freed herself from the need for recognition. During her time through the Visible Hands programs, she removed that burden, gained knowledge and leadership, but also valued her potentialities and capabilities. She learned to love himself and contribute because it was born to her. And she saw its tremendous potential.

At the same time, she recognized the power of her region. “The territory belongs to us because it comes from our ancestors. We resist by taking care of it and not allowing it to be used as an exploitation tool,” she reaffirms. That means taking care of their material, natural, and human resources and their intangible heritage. “The territory is life and as it is life, we must protect it.” The parallel of valuing each other and valuing their territory occurred at the same time because the two were deeply linked. This parallel transformation led him to expand his leadership to support people who had been violated in their rights and were determined to change their minds towards a conception of their territories as their own and worthy.

AURORA VERGARA

“The territory belongs to us because it comes from our ancestors. We resist by taking care of it and not allowing it to be used as an exploitation tool “

Ecosystem of Transformation: Icesi University, Pacific Task Force, Visible Hands, Black Women Disrupt Platform, guest columnist for Semana Magazine and La Silla Vacía.

“My thinking and my ideals changed when I arrived at Icesi University through Visible Hands, where I met my great mentor, Aurora Vergara, a Chocoana woman like me, and one of the first visible hands. I started a link with the Casa Cultural del Chontaduro and Women’s associations, and other organizations. I thought about creating a socio-political school in Chocó and being their mentor, organizing women with HIV. My life had a change. Now I am a confident woman.” Her statement is powerful: Sandra remembers moments of discrimination and ridicule. That past has been replaced by spaces where she contributes her knowledge, along with other women leaders, by a present of commitment and transformation. She knows what it has cost her people to show what they are made of. Now that she knows it and has internalized it, she intends to open more eyes and more paths.

(Istmina, Chocó) 33 years old Director of the Center for Afro-diasporic Studies (CEAF) Icesi University. Author ‘Analysis of the Bojayá Massacre: I demand my freedom’, and more. Leadership route: Development Management Tutor for Afro-Colombian women, DALE, Pacific Connection, MingaLab, BBVA Youth and Peace Building Fund; Participant School of Community Innovation MIT, Member Afroinnova; Member of the Strategic Committee Poder and Potencia Pacífico master’s degree programs, Co-creator of ethnic identity workshops for entities (e.g. Fulbright Colombia).

She was born in Cali and raised in Istmina, which made her a Chocoan rooted in Cali. Her family was forced to migrate due to the forced disappearance of her father during the height of the Cali Cartel when Aurora was 4 years old. The lack of options to study in Istmina led her to make it clear, already in her adolescence, that she wanted to find a way to rewrite the history of Chocó and change that personal and collective past of violence, uprooting and forgetfulness. I was thinking big.

“You have to invest in leadership and accompany them. Every leader needs a grassroots community to accompany, care for and guide them, and mentors who cultivate their thinking “ Thanks to her intellectual vocation, as soon as she graduated from Istmina, she obtained the pass to the big leagues: she won the Andrés Bello prize in history, with which she was able to enter to study sociology at the Universidad del Valle. With low funds and a host of difficul-

AURORA VERGARA

ties she managed to overcome the first year. The second, she won the Martin Luther King Scholarship for African Youth. With a doctorate in sociology at the University of Massachusetts (USA), and distinguished with the Martin Dinsky Prize, the highest academic recognition in the Americas granted by LASA, she recalls that her vocation for the social came to her as a child. She had been a community leader in the community of Istmina, and despite the little time that she had left in her life between books, she worked in community organization processes. In the diocese of Istmina, she learned that leadership processes take time, training and require accompaniment, but she oversaw organizing the patron saint festivities and organizing the groups. She also read from great leaders who inspired her, such as San Martín de Porres, the patron saint of her Pueblonuevo neighborhood. In Cali, she joined the Afro-Colombian Group at her university, where she expanded her knowledge of Africa and planted in her mind the definitive word of her life: “diaspora.” That commitment to her territory connected her with Visible Hands almost from the very design of the idea of the corporation. Her personal decade was also one of transformation: “From undergraduate to master’s degree, to doctorate, to the beginning of a working life in public service, from advisor, professor at Icesi University and director of CEAF,” she recounts. It was a marathon. She received the support of many people to get where 39

she is today. Grateful with life, she now understands that the true leadership of others is built with training and collective work, people who support other people, recommend and guide them. “You have to invest in leadership and accompany them. Every leader needs a grassroots community that accompanies, cares and guides them, and mentors who cultivate their thinking,” Leadership, in short, is a fabric that is built with relationships and interactions. At one time she wanted to stay in Chocó because she loved it and dreamed of being a missionary. After traveling, her mind expanded, and she understood that the place did not matter, everything is connected. Their Chocoan diaspora is linked to that of the United Kingdom, Ghana, or Mozambique. That’s what her idea of empowerment points to. And build, from the positive, knowledge of history and one’s own identity. Believe in the “leaderships that transform.” She herself, when she was studying her first year and thinking together with her uncle how to get out of poverty, she saw the impact that a support had in life. Now, she makes decisions that transform other people’s lives. Keep thinking big.

RENEWING THE CALL HAYNO TAKIR MURCIA,

Business Administration Student from the Icesi University; 23 years old Leadership route: BBVA Youth and Peace-Building Fund - Icesi University 2020 Transformation Ecosystem: Macoas Organization, Potrero Grande (Cali), Member of Visible Hands for transformation in the territory of Cali When he left school, Hayno was not clear about the path that would come for his life. He spent time in libraries to learn on his own and soak up the knowledge, but also because he wanted to study at university. However, there was no money for tuition, and although his entry score allowed him to dream, a series of life’s twists and turns denied him the opportunity. 40

He continued to participate fully in a community process in Cali, out of social commitment, and working as a waiter for a living. A friend alerted Hayno Murcia to a call for Visible Hands. He did not have a computer or internet access, and to participate he had to make a video and upload it online. There was one day left for the closing of the application for the II Youth and Peace Building Fund, so he told himself that he would not let that possibility pass. He asked a friend to help to do it from home. What seemed brief to him in the momento, took him all night.

“The territory belongs to us because it comes from our ancestors. We fight by taking care of it and not allowing it to be used as an exploitation tool “ Late into the night, his form was erased, the loading speed betrayed him, but at 4 in the morning he managed to upload it, with the support of his friend’s family. When he learned that he was competing with 1,200 other young people, he crossed his fingers that life did not deny him another possibility. But it passed all the filters. At 22 years old, he is one of the oldest in the group of Visible Hands scholarship recipients who study at Icesi University, the second cohort of the Youth and Peace Building Fund. “They chose me and others in the District who had this dream. This is an aid to continue with my purpose,” says this young man with origins in Guapi, who continues to work with the Afro-Colombian social and environmental movement Macoas while studying Business Administration with an emphasis on business. In both components of his life he supports youth processes and peace building. The scholarship turned his destiny upside down. “Now I understand that there are people who change things and people who do not: exclusion and incidence of leadership. Nothing is wrong, it is what it is, but it is possible to change it.” Shortly before applying and spending that night without sleep, he had made the decision to work as a logistics assistant. Now your future is full of words like “prepare”, “study” or “contribute” to society. And you cannot have

HAYNO TAKIR MURCIA

happiness every time you refer to your present. One key member of Visible Hands has been his mentor throughout the process, Ana Isabel Vargas. She, like Zoyla Salazar and Angélica Mayolo, is part of the group of godparents for the program. Ultimately, leadership is a chain of mutual support and solidarity.

ANA ISABEL VARGAS

(Cali, Valle del Cauca), 41 years-old Headmaster’s Office Advisor , Universidad Autónoma de Occidente and Senior Technical Manager in Visible Hands Leadership Route: DALE Tutor, School of Government, School of Economics, Pacific Connection, Pacific Connection, MingaLab, BBVA Youth and Peace Building Fund; Manager EducaPazcífico and School of Economics; MIT and Afroinnova Community Innovation Advisor; Member of the Strategic Committee of Maestria Pacific Power, co-creator of ethnic identity workshops for entities (e.g. Fulbright Colombia). Ecosystem of Transformation: Autonomous University of the West, Ministry of Education, Icesi University, Visible Hands, guest columnist for Public Reason. Since she was a child, helping was part of her vocation. In fact, Ana Isabel participated in initiatives with vulnerable

“Since then I have participated in most of the Visible Hands programs, in every possible way: tutor, coordinator, presenter, advisor, volunteer ...” She met and continued to explore a world within the country, and within herself. The exterior ceased to have the halo of mysticism with which I saw it before. “There are not two worlds. We are all part of one, ” she understood.

“There aren’t two worlds. We are all part of one.”

ANA ISABEL VARGAS

communities, where she worked closely with street children and young people, girls forced to carry out sexual work or affected communities. Amid the pain that seeing those realities generated in her, she understood that approaching them allowed her to understand that she too was vulnerable. And sensitive: the world hurt her, and she wanted to heal it. The African concept of Ubuntu made her life mantra clear to her: “I am because we are, and since we are, then I am.” Understanding that everything is connected, that everything we do affects others and what happens in the environment determines us and we can modify it led her to live coherently and to change her way of thinking. That process, remember, was given in depth when she encountered Visible Hands. “I am an invisible hand within Visible Hands; one that helps to promote things, that accompanies and contributes,” she emphasizes. Born in Cali and she spent her childhood in Germany and later in the United States. She traveled the world and although she studied in Bogotá, she was certain that she would live abroad. Security waned when he began working with the corporation on project management issues. A trip to Quibdó as a facilitator of one of the sessions of the School of Government changed the predetermined course of her life.

That process of transformation and reconnection with her land allowed her to understand that she has received more than she has given. “I have shared my experiences and knowledge; In return, they have given me life lessons; I have made an effort to identify potentialities and have seen, in the midst of adversity, empowered leaders flourish; I have tried to promote change, no matter how minimal, in the communities with which we work and I am surprised by the transformations that the leaders themselves promote in their territories; I have felt defeated at times, but it inspires me and strengthens the resilience of this region that ‘does not give up, damn it.” Ana Isabel now knows that there is no leadership without an opportunity. One is enough to transform a life. And one life is enough many times to transform the others. She has also witnessed how strong advocacy networks are woven, such as when the Pazcífico Agenda served as input for the peace accords, or even from a personal point of view, such as when she met her husband in one of the Pacific Connection workshops.

JOHN EDUAR ANGULO

(Puerto Tejada, Cauca), 19 years-old Business Administration student at Icesi University Leadership route: BBVA Youth and Peace-Building II Fund Fellow - Icesi University Transformation Ecosystem: Founder of Walking on Money. Icesi University

JOHN EDUAR ANGULO

At the age of 7 he undertook the most important journey of his life: he left his native Puerto Tejada for Cali. In this new urban environment, and with the load of creativity that he already had, he fell in love with rap and began to forge his talent in freestyle and rhymes. He spent hours improvising on his own and on the street with his friends. What seemed like a hobby took off at age 16, just as he was finishing high school.

“With proposals like this, you can get young people out of drugs and vandalism so that they start making art and represent our culture.” A year later he decided to go beyond acting and rapping to form the “Walking on Money” organization together with a friend. Both had the express intention of supporting young people who wanted to enter the world of urban art. Strengthened as an urban leader, from the Potrero Grande neighborhood he understood that to inspire others it was necessary to improve oneself and be a better person. 41

At that moment in his life he learned about the call for Visible Hands for the Youth and Peace Building Fund. John wanted college education at all costs but saw that option as a steep path. While he was making his music, he was doing surveys for a company. He applied, amid uncertainty, but with a positive attitude.

“If people can develop their abilities and skills, and achieve sustainability, we all win as a society. Knowledge transforms us all “

The result of the command changed the course of his life. He began training at the Icesi University and today he sees that opportunity as a gift from the heart. Also, because “with proposals like this, you can get young people out of drugs and vandalism so that they start making art and represent our culture.” On his side, he has developed an entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurial skills focused on strengthening art and culture in his community. “My life had a great change: I went from being a young man to someone who works for what he likes and for young people who love him, just like me, a young man who is now training professionally to work for my community, and to be stronger in art and culture,” he assures. The illusion overflows him. As in flowing rap, the stanzas of his dreams follow and connect.

the difficulties of the Pacific, the country’s lack of sensitivity about a reality that affects them all, and the lack of opportunities for the majority. “That transformed me. I assumed in my life and in my work a more humanitarian, social and collaborative philosophy,” she recalls.

ZOYLA SALAZAR

already knew part of the reality of her country. Still, something was missing. “I had a veil that prevented me from being aware of the processes.”

ZOYLA SALAZAR

(Cali, Valle del Cauca), 49 years old Financial Manager of Arroz Blanquita

Much of the country feels that the problems in their environment do not imply or affect them. In her case, she had Chocoan roots from her mother and a family connected to social issues, in addition to working in a company that dedicates its best efforts to promoting equality and diversity through good social and ethical practices.

Leadership Route: MIT Community Innovation School and Mel King Fellow MITCoLab: School of Economics Tutor and Pacific Connection Workshops and Practices; MingaLab financial support for Young Creators of Chocó and Canto Pazcífico.

However, the awareness of her territory was not part of her being. With her family they had lived in a middleclass neighborhood. Her mother, a strong woman with self-control, trained her daughters to have a strong personality and to defend themselves.

Ecosystem of transformation: Arroz Blanquita, Petronio Álvarez Festival

It was when she came into contact with Visible Hands that she broadened her vision of the region through the School of Community Innovation with MIT, as a Mel King Fellow and also during her direct participation in the programs as a counselor at the School of Economics or as a mentor at the Pacific Connection Workshops. Just like when Arroz Blanquita sponsored cultural processes such as Young Creators of Chocó or Canto Pazcífco, as it has decidedly done with the Petronio Álvarez Festival. Zoyla understood

Her working life has been linked to rice and, therefore, to working with this product that feeds millions of people, especially in the most vulnerable areas of the country. Thanks to her relationship with Arroz Blanquita, this economist from the University of San Buenaventura, specialized in financial issues and project evaluation, 42

More humane, committed, sensitized, and with the intention of providing help, she put it into her head that her own transformation should be aimed at providing opportunities. “If people can develop their abilities and skills, and achieve sustainability, we all win as a society. Knowledge transforms us all,” she says. It is now one of the godmothers and mentors of the Youth and Peace Building Fund.

RENEWAL BASED ON EMPOWERMENT BLENNY VALECILLA

(Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca), 38 years old Mayor of Continent El Pailón, Buenaventura Leadership Route: Cohort Master’s in Government and Public Policies Pacific Power (Icesi University), Regional Workshops and Political Innovation Laboratory. Ecosystem of Transformation: Council of Buenaventura, (only woman elected) 2015-2019, Mayor of the town Continente El Pailón, Buenaventura. When Blenny finished her secondary studies at the Teófilo Roberto Potes institution, she was 17 years old and had a great illusion to change the world. However, the doors of higher education seemed

and the Political Innovation for Peace Laboratory. That meeting with more people from the region in the same line was decisive because it allowed her to see that her leadership was possible and that her myths and barriers were only mental obstacles.

The look of the territory has changed from complaint to action because we understand that we are called to be part of a new history.

BLENNY VALECILLA

to be closing on her at that moment. She was able to fulfill his dream of studying Public Administration when she had already had her son and got a scholarship to do it. Life seemed to delay her plans, but her sense of stubbornness and tenacity to not quite on her dreams would end up taking her where he wanted. It was in the university process where she made the decision to do political advocacy. Together with nine other colleagues, she joined to form a team that would work with and for the community. Her work at Probisoc, the Abriendo Caminos Social Corporation, allowed her to develop business initiatives and organizational processes, training in arts and crafts, and advising the community. Until that moment she did not know the scope of her leadership, but she was finding it as she expanded his universe. And that universe was significantly broadened when the also graduate in philosophy and political affairs was selected for the master’s degree in government from Visible Hands and became part of the Pacific Connection

With the tools she had earned, and after graduating from her master’s degree in 2015, she was elected as a Buenaventura councilor. In the position she was clear that her level of incidence in the territory had to be positive and that the entire region was part of an organic nucleus whose direction it was time to redirect. Determined to transform adverse circumstances, she put into action what she had learned: to demolish the myth that there were spaces reserved for a few and to transform adverse circumstances for herself and her community. Her transformation was evident. She had gone from shyness to empowerment and “leading the claim of my people with integrity, confidence and dedication. The look of the territory has changed from complaint to action because we understand that we are called to be part of a new story. We are the ones called to build this development, no longer as Buenaventura only, but as an entire region. We are going to change history,” she affirms, with absolute conviction. As well as applauding the protests that have made inequality visible, now it promotes clear routes of incidence to change the horizon. Today, as mayor of Continente El Pailón, she fulfills her personal mission. “History has already told that we don’t tell. But we will transform the story that the next generations will tell,” she says, full of emotion.

ANGÉLICA MAYOLO

(Buenaventura, Colombia), 30 years-old Executive President Buenaventura Chamber of Commerce Leadership Route: “Pacific Power” School of Government, Pacific Connection Workshops, Youth and Peace-Building II Fund tutor Transformation Ecosystem: Buenaventura Chamber of Commerce, Presidency of the Republic, Head of International Cooperation Ministry of the Environment, Secretary of Economic Development of the Mayor’s Office of Cali, Obama Fellow. At 14 she understood that she was a privileged person in the middle of a city of contrasts. She played in the Buenaventura Volleyball Team and traveled to represent her municipality in a tournament outside the city. On the trip she met the parents of her teammates and the complex conditions they faced in order to compete most made a huge sacrifice. She, who had grown up in an environment of social work in which her mother developed aid brigades and her father had educated at least five different generations of students in her work as a teacher, understood that she had to follow the tradition of her home of vocation for the service. The scale had to be balanced. 43

Through the Visible Hands School of Government, I understood that we were born to serve and that those of us who come from regions with great challenges must contribute all our capacities to change the conditions of our populations.

influencing at the national level. For her part, she learned to address the challenges faced by her region differently, and today she is convinced that part of the great change lies in understanding the region. That, and something else: “Supporting the potentials of the region makes it possible to strengthen levels of equity. In every corner there is innovation and creativity. The challenge is to take advantage of talent and provide opportunities to empower themselves,” she concludes. See the talent and how it flourishes, confesses, transforms your life every moment.

She loved her native Buenaventura. She lived in her city until he was 16 years old amid the union of its people and the warmth of its traditions, but also in the midst of its contradictions until she decided to study in Cali to break the stigma that there were differences between one place and another, or that the quality of the students of her city was inferior to those of the capital of the Valley. She set out to be the best and she succeeded: she obtained 300 points out of a possible 300 in the admission process and maintained a GPA above 4.7 until the end of the degree. She created the organization ‘Let’s Take the Fight,’ to generate citizen awareness and civic campaigns in hier land. The learning path led her to the State Council, to the Headquarters of the International Affairs Office of the Ministry of the Environment, to the Economic Development Secretariat in Cali and more recently, to the presidency of the Buenaventura Chamber of Commerce. Your charges are part of your expansion cycle. And transformation. “I am a black woman, raised in a home that valued the culture of the Pacific. Through the Visible Hands School of Government, I understand that we were born to serve and that those of us who come from regions with great challenges must contribute all our capacities to change the conditions of our populations,” she reaffirms with conviction. There’s more: Visible Hands made it possible to make visible the work of other leaders in the Pacific region, including her, to the point of creating synergies and 44

had the official mission of placing a commemorative plaque in the Parisian hotel of Flandre, where Gabriel García Márquez lived for six months. That was already a fascinating story, just like the one they would both start from that moment on. The Colombian Nobel laureate had lived in Paris for several years and spent a difficult period unable to pay the hotel rent, living in an attic waiting for some money to come from Colombia with which to survive. The hotel manager agreed that he would continue staying there in a frozen space with minimal comforts, but he was sheltered from the winter temperatures and for a while, was safe. While the wait was prolonged, the writer produced his new work, the colonel has no one to write. Cepeda Ulloa had stayed there by chance and when he identified the place in the renovated Hôtel des Trois Collèges and learned the full story, he decided to put up a plaque to remember him and create a library with his work in several languages. The year was 2008. They could not get García Márquez to go because the Nobel Prize winner had ambiguous memories of Paris and avoided the tributes, Paula Moreno was the current Minister of Culture. A powerful friendship was born between the two.

FERNANDO CEPEDA ULLOA

(Bogotá), 82 years old Former minister, diplomat, ambassador, academic, and one of the country’s most influential leaders for decades. Leadership route: Conceptual Advisor Masters Power Pacific; Promoter, Founder and Professor at the “Poder Pacífico” School of Government, tutor and panelist in all the Pacífico connection workshops. Fernando Cepeda Ulloa was the Colombian ambassador to France when he met Paula Moreno in Paris. The meeting

They both agreed that it was time to give equal treatment to the Pacific coast leaders; that quality training could not be limited to privileged spaces, but it was time to expand it to other settings so that equity began to be real. That meant taking Harvard, Oxford, MIT, and the University of the Andes to Quibdó or Buenaventura. Or take Cepeda Ulloa himself to those stages. “Tell them what the issue of power is like, how influence is exercised, what leadership is like, do not give stories or theories: tell them what is useful for them so that they can help the Pacific and influence and in decisions in Colombia” His role would be to talk to them about politics, something he was very good at: he had been Minister of Communications and Government, ambassador to the OAS, the UN, the United Kingdom, France and Canada, among others, in a political career of about 40 years. “Tell them what the issue of power is like, how influence is exercised, what

“Tell them what the issue of THE CONVERSION AND power really is, how influence is ENHANCEMENT OF THE exercised and what leadership ENVIRONMENT feels like. Don’t feed them stories HAROLD YUSTY CASTILLO or theories. Tell them what is (Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca), 38 years-old useful for them so that they can Gesampa, Commercial Manager help the Colombian Pacific and Leadership route: DALE, MingaLab have some real influence on the decisions made in the country.” Transformation Ecosystem: Gesampa leadership is like, do not give stories or theories: tell them what is useful for them so that they can help the Pacific and influence and in decisions in Colombia,” he asked Paula Moreno. “That’s what I did. Without speculating,” he confesses with pride. The task was not easy: it involved creating a master’s degree in the Pacific with the best possible private universities, talking with deans, professors and program directors to define new approaches and a real utility, without neglecting the requirement. Cepeda was moved by the process: since his work in the governments of Belisario Betancur and Virgilio Barco, there had been talk of generating a real change in the Pacific, but it did not happen. His legacy in the Ming Government led him to implement the most generous scholarship program for students in the Pacific, “but such a corporation was lacking. All regions should have one that projects them internationally,” he reflects. He completes his reflection with an anecdote: “I once spoke in Quibdó about corruption and raised ethical predicaments. When the students gave their opinions, I understood the level of tolerance for corruption that existed there. It had become internalized as something natural. That showed me that it was necessary to transform the social norm and not the laws. The important thing was to change the thinking of their leaders, and we do that.”

There is enormous gratitude in Harold for the family that gave him life. In fact, he emphasizes that he is humble, hard-working and honest; that his builder father, Raúl, and his mother dressmaker and craftsman, Gloria, as well as his sister Ximena, never denied him anything, least of all an education based on “good principles and respect”. Nor did they deny him the pleasure of dedicating himself to what he loved most: soccer. There is so much gratitude in his statement that it is moving. Since he was little, in fact, he dedicated himself to football, to the point that he was able to enter the best football school in Buenaventura, that of ‘teacher Juan Purula’. He became a professional and showed his talent. His teacher, however, died in a bus accident when they were returning from training. Several more colleagues were injured. The tragic event led him to withdraw from school and set out on his own. It wasn’t bad for him, but he was young, undisciplined, and he couldn’t measure the impact of that initial success.

“I learned to look at my territory in a different way and to speak from the positive. In fact, my life took a complete turn and now I act with a more rational and investigative thinking. I am confident to carry out my projects “ to him then, but his family was excited by the possibility and had the form filled out the next day. He just had to sign it. He studied architecture and at the university where he met María Teresa Sinisterra. Both discovered an environmental calling and embarked on the Gesampa environmental project, with the idea of improving the environmental conditions of the city and giving a second chance to the plastics that are discarded. Harold ended up being part of the DALE program. In his Visible Hands process, he met Uriel Sánchez, an environmental businessman. Both joined their capacities to carry out the project. “I learned to look at my territory in a different way and to speak from the positive. In fact, my life took a complete turn and now I act with a more rational and investigative thinking. I am confident to carry out my projects,” confesses this 38-year-old entrepreneur, married to Viviana Meza.

His initiative was articulated with the Pacific Platform, which impacted five towns in the region, benefiting While that path seemed to dissolve, his heart continued 440,000 inhabitants, and became an alternative of to be linked to social and environmental work. In fact, at economic sustenance for more than 220 families. the age of 17 he had already joined the Community Action Among Gesampa’s projects, one stands out: the Ecogol Board of his neighborhood and had led the youth group program, which finances registrations in children’s soccer and participated in social activities. The increase in public tournaments with recycling and activates the connection order problems in Buenaventura prompted him to migrate with the sport of the children of Buenaventura. The goal to Buga with an aunt while he was studying Graphic that Harold Yusty intended to score on the opposite court Design. But his heart was in his hometown. He returned is now being done socially. And that makes him very, very to dedicate himself to social work and with the idea of happy. studying at the Universidad del Pacífico. It was not so clear 45

of directors, accompanying the DALE programs as a tutor, organizing their annual calendar according to the Visible Hands programs, and understanding that the point of the way that he was most excited to go in this process it was at the graduation of “boys who have bet on education as a tool to overcome poverty.” He had had the opportunity to work with communities since 2006, when he left the Ministry of the Environment. He worked in waste management ventures, linked to communities in the south of La Guajira and Cesar, and understood that experiences with other human and cultural groups nurtured him as a human being. “One is enriched by the optimism and joy they keep, despite the difficulties. In fact, they pose a challenge to us: if under these conditions they assume to transform themselves, what do we do? HAROLD YUSTY CASTILLO

URIEL SÁNCHEZ

(Antioquia), 52 years-old North Regional Director CO2Zero Leadership Route: DALE Tutor, MingaLab and Pacific Connection Meetings. Transformation Ecosystem: Universidad de Los Andes, CO2Zero When Uriel Sánchez went to the Pacific with Visible Hands and toured the streets and other various sectors of Buenaventura, his perspective changed from when it was for the first time, about 20 years ago. It was impossible to get in there without getting out transformed. He had gone to give advice on integral management with usable waste, invited by Bart van Hoof, but the impact of knowing the reality was so strong that he asked to be more active because he felt he could contribute much more. He visited the organization Gestores Ambientales del Pacífico (Gesampa), focused on collecting recycled plastic to have a source of financing and, incidentally, support a soccer championship that included youth and schools. Today, almost 18 teams compete in a tournament “and 46

URIEL SÁNCHEZ

from the sport they take away the violence”, clarifies Uriel Sánchez, with pride.

Especially on the environmental issue. “It is the most biodiverse corner of the planet. In the Pacific they are already the protagonists and managers of solutions to the greatest global concern. It is time to explore alternative economies in a sustainable and strategic way,” he concludes by saying, from Santa Marta.

“One is enriched by the optimism and joy they keep, despite of difficulties. In fact, they pose a INNOVATION FOR THE challenge to us: if under these CHANGE OF PARADIGMS conditions they assume to transform themselves, what do KATHERIN GIL we do? “ (Quibdó, Chocó), 30 years-old

Director of Young Creators of Chocó and Coordinator of MIT CoLAB Quibdó

He was the second to last born of 13 siblings from a traditional Antioquia family. His father had died very young, which made his childhood marked by a shortage of possibilities. “But not feelings,” he clarifies. His older brother pushed all of his siblings and in his case, led him to take a leap to a quality school. “It was the same bet, more than 40 years ago, that today I live with Visible Hands.”

Leadership route: DALE (2013), School of Government (2014), MIT Community Innovation School (2014-2016), Political Innovation Laboratory, Pacific Connection Workshops, MingaLab IV, Master’s Degree in Government and Public Policies U. EAFIT, Afroinnova, Quibdó Visible Hands Coordinator

As the northern regional director at CO2Cero, Uriel ended up working as an alternate member of the board

Ecosystem of Transformation: CoLaB MIT, Young Creators of Chocó

Today I want to vindicate our identity values. May my word be constructive and generative to narrate my territory from action: if I narrate it positively, it will be positive. No more narratives that minimize us.”

KATHERIN GIL

“I was a girl trying to be a girl,” she says. Katherin’s childhood was marked by a more than difficult context: she grew up in a popular neighborhood in Quibdó where there was a strong incidence of drug trafficking, coupled with street gangs, prostitution and the pain of homicides and street fights. “We were a generation that tried to be boys and girls in that complex environment. We did it from the resistance of traditional games, telling our life stories or dreaming of new stories. The fever in my neighborhood made me think about getting out of that world.” She decided to achieve goals to give job options to the youth of those gangs. It would be your social reward for your personal growth. She bet on education, because it was what was within her reach and because she had understood that this way, she could help others and save lives. And she knew the way to achieve it: there was rap, break dance, and strong cultural movements that broke the presence of chaos and death and became “fine threads to build and remove frustration.” They connected people and made them smile.

With the clarity of what she had to do, she dedicated herself to carrying out community activities, participated in the group Somos Chocó, played basketball, did traditional dance, and decided to go against the status quo that she did not want. It was there when she understood the need to be part of the universe of power. “We didn’t want any adults giving us orders. In order not to be disbanded, several of us joined together and created Young Creators of Chocó ”and from there they narrated their own stories. The work Amangualados, with the story of Eugenio Gómez Borrero, the first man shot in Colombia and Chocoano in the center of power, was his initial approach to a reality unknown to them. She participated in the DALE program, in the regional workshops of Conexion Pacífico and MingaLab, and she was determined not to be more invisible. She transformed herself to stop thinking about Quibdó only and to start thinking about the Pacific as a whole. She learned to manage herself and to be an integral person to inspire and serve while attending the master’s in government and public policies. She spoke of power gained. “Today I want to vindicate our identity values. May my word be constructive and generative to narrate my territory from action: if I narrate it positive, it will be positive. No more narratives that minimize us.” Her transformation stems from innovation and through Visible Hands it connected with in the process of CoLAB. It works on the potential of its territory and for an economic democracy. “Innovation from the margins”, specifies Katherin, who knows well what it means to be on the margin.

JIMMY GARCÍA

(Quibdó, Chocó), 38 years-old Founder and Director of the Chocó Robotics School Leadership route: MingaLab II-VI, MIT School of Community Innovation, Regional Workshops and Afroinnova. Tutor DALE and creator Innovation Girls. Transformation Ecosystem: Chocó Robotics School Few things excite a young man more than the words laboratory and play. It had happened to Jimmy García since he was a child, when he was a child and a fan of the Transformers, and he experienced with them the power of turning cars into automated robots and vice versa. Toy bicycles and soccer players always motivated him to occupy the first places of his class, Jimmy fulfilled the most Chocoano dream of all: to forge his own path through education. In 1998, he finished high school and his family made a great effort so that their son could have a high-quality education. The chosen destination was Bogotá. It was the moment of the boom of systems engineering in the world, so Jimmy opted to be at the forefront and signed up for that career at the Free University. He had no experience with computers, but it was the future, and he had to risk it.

“They told us that we were condemned to poverty and exclusion, but history is being rewritten. It will be a story told by us.” Bogotá, however, was not his final destination. When the race finished, he went to Medellín, where he felt more welcomed. He ended up working with the Ministry of Education of Medellín and there he began to carve out a path of teaching science, technology and innovation. In 2011, by chance, robotics came into his life. What seemed like a technological fad turned into an adventure. In 2016, with a new illusion and many ideas, he returned to Quibdó. 47

government to change reality, but on new leaderships, like his. That real transformation would also come about only from reengineering. As an engineer, he is clear that change occurs by modifying the operating system, reprogramming, and this generation of leaders has that power. Today, he thinks about the collective and collaborative construction, he loves his territory, he wants to add to change and inspire students, moving from resistance to transcendence.

JIMMY GARCÍA

He found what he expected: no local support for his idea. Together with Adolfo Copete, he presented the initiative of the Chocó Robotics School to the call of Visible Hands and MIT to be part of the School of Community Innovation, EIC-Lab. It was a crucial accolade. Not only did his initiative have more echo, but it was also able to strengthen. With MingaLab in 2017 and the vision of being a grassroots organization, the Pacific Innovation Center Corporation was born. While the students attended the School and worked with technology and circuits with the emotion of creating and experimenting, Jimmy understood his own personal transformation process: the main input to achieve his goals had been passion, which had become commitment and obstinacy. “A great idea without passion can fail quickly, but what seems like a bad idea with passion can turn into a fantastic one if you refine it over time,” he says. In fact, sooner rather than later, he would have given up on his apparently crazy idea of creating a laboratory where boys and girls would learn robotics in Quibdó. “I did not have support from local administrations, I did not have support from close people who could help me to start the initiative, but I did not give up. Every day I became more passionate about making it a reality and the enthusiasm of the children was the fundamental factor,” he notes. In that process, he understood that he could not depend on the 48

“They told us that we were condemned to poverty and exclusion, but history is being rewritten. It will be a story told by us,” he concludes. And he knows it well: they were ranked 20th in the global robotics competition in China, out of 700 delegations; The Innovation Girls have already visited NASA, they have ranked second in the national championship and their goal is to go to the next championship to be held in Japan. JOSÉ CARLOS ÁLVAREZ

In this process, at MingaLab, José Carlos Álvarez, general communications tutor for the Visible Hands network and MingaLab, helped them not only to be clear about the message and the communications strategy, but also how the value of their actions should be known by the country so that the nation would understand that Chocó and science go together.

JOSÉ CARLOS ÁLVAREZ (Popayán), 39 years-old Partner / Director of Ágora Talks

Leadership Route: ProBono Visible Hands Communications Advisor, Development Management Program Tutor for Afro-Colombian Women, communications tutor and spokesperson for all DALE, Government Schools, Political Innovation Laboratories, and MingaLab communications tutor. Transformation Ecosystem: Ágora Talks, Administration, National Foundations His first years of life were not motionless at home, like other children. He lived his early childhood in the mountains, among communities, playing with children who were his

equals, and who later understood that others considered different. He was fortunate that his mother was an anthropologist with strong political leadership in Cauca and that she took him on work trips to the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities of Cauca. His father complemented this intense traveler because he also worked with social organization issues. In fact, his mother was the director of the National Rehabilitation Plan, which led the 1989 peace process with the M-19. That meant visiting the communities where the Quintín Lame group operated and going out to play soccer or going to school with the children of the combatants from Corinto, Cauca, who demanded social justice. With his father, on the other hand, he entered the heart of the Afro-communities and became part of his day for a while, accompanying him to wade for gold in her harsh routine of artisanal mining. Going out, for him, was accompanying his parents at work. Other kids his age went to Disney while he cruised the Pacific from his native Popayán. That first connection with reality allowed him to have a broad view of the world in an innocent way, strengthened by the conversations in

his home during dinner around politics or social conflict. Political scientist and philosopher, Carlos jumped into the corporate world, he briefly lived abroad and returned to assume the digital communications of the Peace Process with the FARC. At that point in his life, he found the vein that connected his personal passion for political strategy with his contribution to development.

“My vision has been transformed. I came to the regions wanting to help, but you don’t have to be an aid worker. One will learn to build. It is a mistake to think from a center that supplies the regions “ However, the strategic world and his work disconnected him from social reality. It was there that he encountered Visible Hands. Paula Moreno invited him to give workshops on political strategy and José Carlos understood that this would reconnect him with his original passion. “I teach techniques, but they teach me more than they imagine because through them I find real voices,” In fact, he refocused his company and rethought his own venture. “My vision has been transformed. I came to the regions wanting to help, but you don’t have to be an aid worker. One will learn to build. It is a mistake to think from a center that supplies the regions,” he says. It makes one smile to think of the faces of those who have achieved their dreams thanks to your strategies. “I remember the case of a gay boy, Afro, in Quibdó, he was 18 years old and was determined to be a Councilor in Cértegui. I helped him put together the campaign and in the end his campaign was successful.” He knows what this means: changes that seem tiny but leave their mark on new generations. Profound changes that he knows can be achieved if experiences are extrapolated and adjusted to local realities. He himself is another now, with his company Agora Talks. Or the same one you dreamed of being as a child.

LEADERSHIP FOR THE NEW TIMES MILADY GARCÉS

(Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca), 27 years-old Strategy consultant for MIT CoLab. Leadership route: DALE 2014, MingaLab, MIT CoLAB School of Community Innovation, Master of Government and Public Policy Icesi University Transformation Ecosystem: Buenaventura Women’s Organizations, MIT CoLAB, rural organizations, Viche Positivo From a young age, Milady was concerned about social dynamics and processes. It seems something unusual for a girl, but she lived in an environment marked by complex situations, such as Buenaventura, where the greatest contradiction is given by the size and relevance of its massive port and the contrast with the conditions of vulnerability and absence of rights of its citizens.

“I understood that we always communicate through everything we do. I learned to delve into the complexities, and not always act from the militancy, but from the strategy “ She also had an example at home: her mother, Gloria Amparo Arboleda, was a social leader who spent more time in the communities than in her home. “At the beginning, that caused a problem because I did not understand why it was due to others, but in the end, I understood, through her, the essence of a vocation for others. Who does not live to serve does not serve to live? My school, in fact, had a leadership approach and thanks to that I assumed that condition. I participated in the indigenous and Afro

MILADY GARCÉS

Amusí association, and with the National Network of Afro-Colombian Women “Kambirí”. I followed that path until I studied business administration and did a diploma on issues related to my identity,” he says. Meanwhile, she began to look for references of Afro women who had broken the stigmas and social paradigms. Rosa Parks and Angela Davis were her first world references, but she wanted closer national figures. Her own mother or Paula Moreno were the ones she could refer to. Precisely her participation in DALE, from Visible Hands, led her to connect with the Pacific network. “I understood that we always communicate through everything we do. I learned to delve into the complexities, and not always act from the militancy, but from the strategy,” she explains, when talking about her personal transformation. “From that moment on, my leadership was more conscious because I went from speech or recognition to action scenarios. My vision of business administration gained in social focus. I learned to see the multidimensional factors that make realities change, to change failure, I understood how to make prototypes and now I only see opportunities to empower,” she adds, loaded with emotion. She later participated in the School of Community Innovation where she would connect with in the process ofCoLAB, the 49

produced its first fruit: the first expression center for men, whose proposal seeks to change the social imaginaries in Chocó, which prevent, due to cultural legacies and social pressure, that men express themselves fluently with women on such issues. simple like hugging them or holding hands in public. He leads that change.

MingaLab and the Master of Government. With that, you have the tools. Previously, Milady had the will. Her drive to excel has led her to assume the voice that the “viche” is considered heritage; has put the issue on the public agenda, it has dignified the voice of the producers of this ancestral drink and has developed three “vichera” summits and a meeting of ancestral knowledge. Now, although she knows that the cry is a valid way to demand rights, she understands that there are other options of greater incidence. “Leaders are not leaders at specific times. We are leaders all the time,” she says. There is so much confidence in her voice that there is no doubt about it.

“I have assumed the values o f belonging to my territory, of building from the local, being a leader and demonstrating it with the value of my word.”

JESSYMAR ÁLVAREZ

(Bojayá, Chocó), 31 years-old Junior consultant on masculinity issues. Former councilor of Quibdó Leadership route: DALE 2015, School of Government 2016, Political Innovation Laboratory. MingaLab African Literature Laboratory Ecosystem of Transformation: Red Juvenil de Mujeres Chocoanas, MIRA Party His childhood was marked by bleakness to the point that one wonders, when listening to his story, how he can smile so much and have the strength that goes with it. Jessymar was born in Bojayá in 1988, he was raised by his paternal grandmother and life prevented him from having a mother and father at the same time. When the paramilitaries entered his town in 1997, he moved to Quibdó. He went from having an open space to paying rent during deficiencies, from having the river and food a few steps away to starving, and from living happily and among trusted people to growing up in a complex environment. He grew up in the difficult neighborhood of La Aurora, where he understood the difficulties of exclusion, but also the importance of leadership. At school he aspired to be a representative, and although he lost that first attempt in the world of democracy, he thus began his mission as a natural leader. Aware that crucial decisions were made in 50

JESSYMAR ÁLVAREZ

politics for his community, he aspired to the Community Action Board of his Los Álamos neighborhood and won. He ran for mayor and was unsuccessful. But he ran for council and got the second municipal vote, making him the youngest elected councilman. “My strength has been to work for the society, more specifically as children with disabilities. With the Chocó Posible Foundation, for example, hundreds of people’s lives have been impacted and we delivered wheelchairs to 50 children and 50 older adults. Now I focus on the gender line because there is a lot of violence from men against women.” Jessymar is an advanced man and feminist thinking, who directly supports the “Red Departamental de Mujeres Chocoanas” and the “Red Juvenil” as project coordinator. In this sense, he recalls the impact of his proposal to paint the houses of El Futuro 2, in Commune 1 of Quibdó: he obtained and offered paint for households that wanted to change their façade if they allowed him to do violence prevention work. “Today the houses still contain those very paintings.” Now he works in a center for productive and sustainable projects for young people. He also does works with young victims of violence, in a process of entrepreneurship in new transformative masculinities. This project has already

His contact with Visible Hands was through the first DALE call. He did the process, graduated and then participated in the Pacific Connection Workshop, School of Government, the Laboratory of Political Innovation for Peace, MingaLab and the African Literature Laboratory. With all those tools he managed to be a councilor. His transformation continues today: “It is impossible for me to get to a position and not do things well because I have internalized the values of belonging to my territory, of building from the local, being a leader and demonstrating it with the value of my word. Visible Hands is my peaceful family,” he says, smiling, as he knows how to do. In the process of launching into politics, he had multiple tutors such as Juan Pablo Milanese, Luis H. Berrio, Pedro Viveros, and Jorge Melguizo, who helped him organize the political and marketing strategy, put him down in reality and pushed him to achieve his goal.

JORGE MELGUIZO

(Medellín, Antioquia), 58 years-old International consultant, he has been responsible for Culture and Education at Comfama and Secretary of Culture and Social Integration of the Mayor’s Office of Medellín Leadership Route: Development Management Tutor for Afro-Colombian Women, DALE (all), MingaLab (all), School of Government (all), Political Innovation Laboratory, Visible Hands Strategic Plan advisor and Power and Pacific Power master’s degrees.

“We are not built as a nation. Very few facts have built us as a nation. Not we have neither the knowledge nor the recognition nor the appreciation of what other territories mean because each one lives in their own little piece of land.”

JORGE MELGUIZO

Ecosystem of Transformation: Entities that advise nationally and internationally. Jorge Melguizo has Medellín in his heart. Not only because he was born in San Javier –in the 13th commune of Medellín–, studying social communication at the University of Antioquia or having been a university professor there, but also because his work in various NGOs, his pedagogy and civic cultural processes related to his city They have led him to speak and feel the Paisa capital as if it were an integral part of his own being. However, his love for the land that he has defended runs through the invisible regions. Visible Hands is that thread. In fact, thanks to him, he managed to weave a solid bond with a region he did not know: the Pacific. “The knowledge of a region or a territory is the knowledge of the imaginaries, symbols, knowledge, knowledge, forms of expression and the different cultures that make it up. I once said in a meeting of the Master in Government “Pacific Power” with the Eafit and Icesi Universities, speaking of the emphasis of the master’s degree in peacebuilding, which is much more what we have to learn from the Pacific than they from the rest of the country: learning from the personal, solidarity, realizing that culture, its nature, its resilience, its music, its gastronomy and its taste so authentic in the literal and metaphorical.

ties during her tenure as Minister of Culture to celebrate Colombia’s independence day. Although he has held full-time and consulting positions in more than 130 cities around the world, he confesses that what he really misses is not being fully at Visible Hands. “It is one of the projects that I enjoy the most and the ones that I learn the most.”

Jorge Melguizo tacitly connected to Visible Hands first, after meeting Paula Moreno at the time they were in public positions, she as Minister of Culture and he as Secretary of Citizen Culture of Medellín. However, after that meeting linked to culture, they began a more personal relationship that ended in an invitation for Jorge to fully join the corporation’s projects. He lasted seven years accompanying this task, in a timely manner, from the work he did in Cartagena with women’s entrepreneurship projects to others to which he dedicated herself with absolute intensity, such as MingaLab, Government Schools, Political Innovation Laboratory, DALE, the Pacific Connection workshops in Cali and Bogotá and the development of the Visible Hands strategic plan, now underway. In that period, Melguizo became linked to the territory, to the Afro-culture, to its roots, and with it, to the entire country and its peoples. At 58 years of age, he is still undergoing a process of transformation and understanding of the country thanks to what he has learned: “We do not build ourselves as a nation. Very few facts have built us as a nation. We do not have the knowledge or the recognition or the appreciation of what other territories mean because each one lives in their own piece of land.” He remembers only three crucial moments in which a collective feeling connected everyone: the massive marches to demand a peace process, the 5-0 from Colombia to Argentina during the qualifying rounds for the 1994 FIFA World Cup; and the July 20 National Concerts that Paula Moreno organized in all municipali-

LORENA TORRES

(Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca), 52 years-old Colombian poet and writer Leadership Route: African Literature Laboratory “From my mother’s womb, I was already declaiming,” says the poet Lorena Torres, with a degree in Dramatic Art from the Universidad del Valle and a specialist in Folklore Pedagogy from the Universidad Santo Tomás, with modesty. To say that, in her case, the poetic acts come from before the cradle is a metaphor for her poetic predestination. At the age of four she was already part of the dance groups of her native Buenaventura together with Leonor Herrera, her mother, married to Justino Torres, from López de Micay. Her older brothers Jairo and Nando also participated in the group. The latter encouraged her to become a doctor, specializing in obstetrics. Fortunately for Pacific literature, although Lorena managed to enroll in a degree in Biology, 51

her vocation led her to rebel against the idealized destiny of medicine and she chose to be an artist, despite the warning from her relatives that she would have died of starvation. ‘ “It did not happen, and here I am,” adds the author of Atarrayando el Forgetido, a poem that summarizes the pain of the displaced from their region who come to bear contempt in the cities.

“We apply, yes we can: we have to achieve it because what we do is full of riches that should be highlighted.” Her mentor in the process ofgaining her own voice was the poet Hugo Montenegro, declaiming of the full wealth of the Choco’s, Miguel A. Caicedo. The inclination towards women’s poetry was inherited from her godmother, the no less talented traditional poet Lucrecia Panchano. Her vocation led her to a moment that she remembers with emotion, when she gave US President Barack Obama, in 2012, a copy of the Matriax Poems anthology, and then she sent her the poem The Black List, and a text with the slogan “Yes we can ” which he used in his campaign. She describes her connection to Visible Hands in her poetic style: “It was like when you see a woman in pregnancy, but the child has not been born. I met Paula Moreno at the Ministry of Culture. I was part of Afro-feminine organizations, among them the Afro-Colombian Women’s Network. When Visible Hands was born, I lived a deep rejoicing, because there the human talents of the region were strengthened and leaders who did a silent work were made visible. Then came diplomas and processes like the African Literature Laboratory, which was the best for me. Even my daughter Oriana has been favored with the life projects of the corporation, even though she is still in high school.” Thanks to this, she was able to recognize the riches of her region and make visible the cultural potential of its people. “This is the only way we have given each other hands to 52

move forward and mark processes together.” Lorena and other artists are learning to bridge the social gaps that kept them far away and are replacing them with a creative network that leads them to claim the voice they deserve. “Visible Hands has gone further than other organizations because it overcame the diagnosis to offer solutions that allow leaders to take control of their territory and train to return and move forward. It helped us discover our identity and showed us how to develop individual and collective projects with the purpose of leaving seeds in the community. We were so invisible that we were forgetting to look at ourselves,” she explains. The process that was most enhanced was the cultural one. Through the African Literature Laboratory, she learned the value of her own culture, understood the opportunities that for years had been denied to her and her peers. She recalled the value of the songs that lulled her, of her way of speaking, of the culinary manifestations that were a heritage in themselves, and of how her personal and Peaceful voice is as powerful as those of others. “We apply the “Yes we can” and how we have to achieve it because what we do is full of riches that should be highlighted,” adds Lorena, who now works as a teacher and has raised her daughter Oriana so that she understands that her inheritance will be free from the paradigms of invisibility and exclusion. “The Pacific should have had its own voice a long time ago because we have always had the same rights as others. Is the time. We have found paths of success and the struggle is now felt more. Our writing has a historical feeling, it is loaded with identity, struggle and dignity. It is a writing that does not remain in pain but is resilient and contains spirituality.” This is how she defines it. This is how it is. Lorena’s poetry talks about what the Pacific is, what has happened and what it aspires to be. As she speaks from identity, her writing contains a force that is hardly found in other writers. The essence and history of the Pacific, marginalization and pain are united in each of his words. But, above all, and above all else, her writings screams and sings to life.

GILBERT NDI SHANG

(Cameroon, Africa, Wimbum ethnic group), 38 years-old Doctor in Comparative Literature. Tutor of the African Literature Laboratory in Buenaventura, Tumaco and Quibdó Leadership route: African Literature Laboratory Tutor In Africa, stories talk volumes. Gilbert was born between them, in the city of Nkambe, in northwestern Cameroon, as part of the Wimbum ethnic group. In fact, his mother tongue is Limbum, a word that is divided into Li (language) and mbum (which refers to speakers). Hence, preserving his culture and traditional storytelling is crucial. Gilbert studied primary school in Luh and secondary school in Nkambe. In the fourth year of high school, he chose to study the arts (literature, economics, geography, languages, and history), as opposed to the decision of his school, which oriented him to the sciences (chemistry, physics, and biology). He was good at the sciences, but his passion was rooted in the arts. Since his father was a primary school teacher (now retired), he grew up with a family library full of books that opened the way to the magical world of narrative fiction. In Yaoundé, he studied bilingual letters and graduated with honors. He trained as a language teacher and did a master’s degree in modern English letters. In 2010, he completed his doctoral studies in Comparative Literature in Germany.

A book of his, “Letters from America” published in 2019, makes a Pan-African call that, somehow, connected him with Visible Hands. “My commitments to the corporation are in line with my convictions about the mandatory collaboration that should exist between Africa and Latin America. There is a historical tragedy between us and identity to build bridges between these two continents and rethink new ethics of human relationship. I firmly believe in what the Cameroonian philosopher, Achile Mbembe says: “There is an interconnection between the condition of Afro-descendants in the world and the situation of Africans on the African continent.” Our struggles inspire each other. The well-being of one is of immense interest to the other.”

“There is good energy, brotherhood and sisterhood among the groups and individuals that fight to make Afro-descendants visible and empower new generations.”

African literature and the role it has played in decolonization and in the fight for a just and inclusive society. This need is also found in the Pacific, and that can be read in the stories selected in the anthology,” he adds. From the Colombian Pacific I only knew the literature of Arnoldo Palacios. During his stay he met Rogerio Velásquez, Helcías Martán Góngora, Mary Grueso, Imelda Díaz, Laura Victoria Valencia, Paulina Cuero Valencia, and Lorena Torres Herrera. The most important thing was what he found in their voices. “The question of their identity, their blackness, their African conscience, and their ‘thirst for Africa’, as Laura Victoria says in his poem about the Atrato River.” A thirst that connects them with a world in which Africa is still linked to stigmatization, but in which the authors recognize their African roots and descent, no longer as a weakness, but as a source of inspiration, from an ethical conscience. Thanks to the Laboratory, its participants internalized the need to question the prejudices of the center and validated the power of the borders.

In Colombia, and through the leadership of Visible Hands, Gilbert found an honest desire for collaboration. “I learned the sense of commitment and resilience with my collaborators from the Colombian Pacific and the participants of the Laboratory. Their optimism, even in difficult conditions, and their ability to work together are not found in many parts of the world. There is good energy, brotherhood and sisterhood among the groups and individuals that fight to make Afro-descendants visible and empower new generations.” In the country, he understood that the real challenge for the territories, both in Africa and Latin America, is balanced development, or giving opportunities to citizens of their less favored regions. If this is achieved, he says, there will be a burst of talent. To reinvent yourself, you must believe in the role of literature. “It helps us to reimagine ourselves, to redefine our looks and to invent new visions in a thoughtful way. The foundation of the African Literature Laboratory that I made with Visible Hands was to share the strength of 53

NEW FUTURES, NEW LEADERSHIP, AND NEW TRANSFORMATIONS

“My hair is like my mind, wild and mysterious. My hair is vines of thread from which stories are hung. There they swing and play during the day and night. Sometimes they are dropped on my forehead, my back, or behind my ears. I listen to them play, I listen to them dance and sing until they go back into the jungle. I like to be talked to, especially when I write. That is why when he wrote he always stroked my hair, prompting stories to tell me something. He stroked my hair so that the stories whisper their stories in my ear.” Mario Alberto Dulcey

We Are Already Writing Our Future

“I am Tatiana, daughter of Tumaco, very owner of the grove, and very owner of that dying sun that, between yellow and red, radiates the purest beauty in a sublime and dazzling sunset. I am the girl, I am the woman, I am the smile and the cry too; I would never forget any of the adventures lived in my beloved land, not even those of the deepest pain.” Gloria Tatiana Benítez (Tumaco)

As evidenced in the previous chapters, the Visible Hands programs shaped and transformed life stories. What comes after the story that empowers its characters? In literature, storytellers have two basic ideas. The first is that at every point in the story where the plot turns upside down, the story changes forever. The force that impacts the story modifies it and its characters take a new course. The second idea is that the characters always live to transform themselves: there is no deep and meaningful story in which the characters do not begin as one and end up as others. To this extent, it can mean if reality changes when we read, gain knowledge, and enrich ourselves with new worldviews based on fiction, our reality expands when we write our own stories. These fragments that speak of Afro-Colombian identity were taken from the anthology ‘Vení te leo,’ (Come, I will read to you) and are the result of the first Laboratory of African Literature. They are also proof that the Afro-Colombian identity is writing itself and is writing its own transformative story. That is precisely the future story that Visible Hands aims to write. “You know, if you have looked closely from a plane when you are arriving to Chocó, you will observe a majestic view of the jungle, green and yellowish-brown due to the color of the river that spreads like a huge snake. If you have seen it, you could understand the dimensions and forked shapes of my hair, it seems that its curls and tangles have no limits or the possibility of being hugged by the comb. My hair is deeply embedded in my other ways of being, it is very similar to me.” Luisa Barcos

“Being out of my hometown, I understood that Buenaventura was comfortable for me, very comfortable, and that is why I was always rocking in an armchair; on the home side, staying there meant stillness and it was something that would not allow me to grow, hence my decision to leave, to stumble, to stop when necessary and continue walking.” Victoria Hurtado (Buenaventura) “The downpour has the device to trap me in the past. The first drops that fall slowly on the ceilings announce the frantic dance of memories that later, in hasty drops, unravel, above all, filling every thought with nostalgia.” Lorena Torres (Buenaventura) “Chocó is a magical place, and I am not saying it only because of the myths of Riviel or La Tunda, or the endless veins of gold and platinum that compete with the paradises of stones in The Thousand and One Nights, but also for its plants full enchantments, effective remedies against the ills of the body and soul, its jungles populated by voices of ancient spirits and because its animals warn the agent when death is approaching; there coexists the green showpieces of nature, the almost palpable humidity of the air and the ‘fever’ of the people.” Gustavo Rojas (Andagoya) ““The platforms of the famous Sixth Street (one of the most important residential and commercial levels in the center of Buenaventura, where the humble but cozy wooden house where I was born was located) became a party. Men and women, between neighbors and store employees, regardless of ethnicity or social class, soaked their throats with that letter that intoxicated them with joy and flavor. ” Salvatore Laudicina (Buenaventura) “My mother was born in Chocó, on the Baud river. We do not know the year, so she is a woman without time. Any age is the same. My father is from Cauca, he was born in a midway place that is not enough to be a district (the Rest), a space time between Padilla and Río Negro. Both were sent at a very young to Bogotá to study and both were betrayed by their foster relatives. When they got tired of waiting for the start of classes, a lot of time had passed in which they had worked as a nanny and dishwasher without pay for their “uncles”.. Lizeth Gómez (Bogotá)

“I was ten years old, and precisely on that day I turned ten I was in the municipality of Cértegui, Chocó, the birthplace of my mother, and the residence of my maternal family. Cértegui is famous for its two rivers, Quito and Cértegui. I was enthusiastic because I would have the chance to enjoy its waters, since we were on vacation and only on those dates my mother, my sister, and I would travel from Quibdó to there.” Yamileth Velásquez (Quibdó)

“That old device (the tower) seems to be destined to always occupy the same space; the last corner of the immense country kitchen. Until harvest time came, at which point it became the center of routine activities for all the families in my community. It was generally operated by men, due to the roughness of the manducos (wooden mallets) that made it work, although many women were also measured to the issue, without caring that their bodies lost what we now call “femininity”. In short, they were those other times.” Cleider Palacios (Quibdó)

“I began to be much more critical and to wanted to communicate my knowledge with other boys, I wanted to speak, not to be afraid or to complain, but to demand, because there are things that we demand with so much struggle (and for which blood has been shed, when that should be paramount). The strike ended, but I was left with the desire to learn more about how the university works. How were things handled in it? What did we have rights to? And so, I used this knowledge to strengthen the folk group, which was not only about dances but also a way to combat injustices.” Tania Hinestroza “Professor Anita addressed me with an intimidating look, a disapproving and arrogant tone, a rigid posture and crossed arms, and said: “Hey, you! Fix your hair! Put up that hair and pay attention to what I’m explaining! “ She did not know who she was addressing, as she did not usually call anyone by name. When I found out that she was talking to me, confused by her comment, I replied: “What did my hair do? This is just the way my hair is.” I did not understand why wearing my hair natural was a reason not to notice her explanation. As if my hair made me less intelligent and capable than my peers.” Rosa Cristina Martínez “I am inside myself, / wrapped in my own blood, / in the blood that covered my body / on the day of my birth. / In the same position / that I kept for months, / in the soft liquid / that wore / our fragility, / absorbed and remains, / wrapped in my embryo, / awake and I see myself, / it’s me / stuck in the flesh of my mother. / The double color of the mirror, / the dissected world / in the light of childbirth / and the departure of the territory / loved and perfect ...” Luisa Barcos “I remember that my favorite book was Pretty Girl (1986), by the Brazilian writer Ana Maria Machado, a story about a black girl, very black, who because of her black color was envied by a white, very white rabbit. The rabbit, in addition to wanting to be black, very black as a pretty girl, was always trying to do anything to find out her secret or to paint herself black. Although my mother read me many stories, that is the one I remember the most.” Yaisa Mariam Rodríguez “At dawn, my grandmother — born on the banks of the San Juan River, in a small village that did not have churches or health centers — noticed the absence of the electronic device, as she used to say. She thought maybe someone had saved it, so she did not alter the spirits and began to make coffee. Being the oldest of three siblings with a father and a mother, my grandmother always knew how to take care of children, how to do housework: sewing, cooking, cleaning. In short, how to run a home. When she was nine years old, she witnessed the death of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on television, although by then she no longer lived in Chocó, her parents had sent her to the great metropolis of the Pacific: Buenaventura.” Angie Pastrana (Buenaventura)

OUR CHALLENGE: LEADING THE INVINCIBLE

Being a leader in normal conditions can be confused with doing the task for which, in many cases, we are paid. But today, faced with this existential crisis that we are going through, leading goes much further: it is the exceptional, the great and the profound that is at stake, and what it requires of the best thinkers, managers and motivators.

For ethnic communities and many excluded communities, the current lockdown is not the first. There are other pandemics that have marked its existence.

Leading both organizations and systemic changes is very demanding. Today, the survival of entire sectors are at risk. One must be very selective on how to handle the urgent business and be strategic in ways to avoid drowning going through the first, second, and the third wave that will happen. The existential questions are: What does it mean to lead today? What are the leaderships that are needed and at what scale? Can it be me? I am convinced that it is imperative for everyone to renew or open space to new leaderships, which produce new transformations and new futures, since the complexity of the next few years will not be less. Take a look at a reflection that our own Visible Hands members had in a special we did on COVID-19.

Poverty and forced displacement are evidence of this. During COVID-19 pandemic, we have recognized that structural racism is one of the great challenges on the global agenda, at the same level as the climate crisis and violence against women, girls and boys. Each of these issues has disparity as a determining factor. With or without COVID-19, we will continue to try to live rather than survive, it has never been easy for the communities we work with. We are going for more, because it is no longer time to postpone what cannot be postponed. Asking to wash hands when there is no drinking water, virtual education without connectivity, staying at home when 90% of people live in informality is a tremendous crossroads: virus or hunger? 56

For those of us who live on the Coast, standing on the constant edges of decision, crucial and alone ... looking in and out, both before and after, looking for a now that can engender futures Audre Lorde (1978)

BETWEEN THE PANDEMIC AND I

You must wake up from false reality. Teidy Cano, Cartagena Development Management Program for Afro-Colombian Women, master’s degree in Cultural Management Pacific Power Unbelievably, my daily life became everyone’s daily bread. They all lived the days of confinement that I knew from a very young age due to the lack of money in my house. My parents had to go out — both — all day to get something to eat. They are certainly a reflection of the norm for many families; for others, the situation is even worse. As a child I understood that for reasons I did not understand, life was more difficult for me, just as it was for many of my schoolmates. To think if we were going to have a place to live or what to eat, if I was going to be able to study, if my mother couldn’t go to work anymore; She felt helpless not to be able to produce to help her. I experienced premature stress, instability, and uncertainty. Between the pandemic and I, it is again no surprise that the racial gaps in which we live have widened. The rest is part of our history, of that inequality that is unequivocally crossed by ethnicity. I heard very discouraging phrases: that this virus is “a matter of hunger,” that this has affected the mental health of more than one person; I learned of a family of ten who have always lived in a house with only one room and have no way of isolating those who have been infected. But, after all, who am I? It’s simple: I am human, and the human runs through me. Between my body and the world, I am a woman, Afro-descendant, citizen, with a cultural identity and integral freedom. I was born in a context and with a social contract assigned to me by these labels. And, beyond the conjuncture and the historical pressure - not only my life experiences and those of my community, but also those of my ancestors, of the social fractures that the pandemic perpetuates -, beyond all that, our spirit is supportive; our culture and our knowledge help us to survive. We have and collaborate with each other to take care of ourselves and others. I keep thinking about what I can do to make a permanent life in pandemic conditions stop being normal life for my people.

Poverty has the face of a woman Milady Garcés, Buenaventura DALE, MingaLab, MIT CoLAb Community Innovation School and Master’s Fellow, Gobierno Pacífico U. Icesi We are facing a feminization of poverty. From there we understand the preponderance of women among the impoverished population. Poverty is a differentiated phenomenon, which specifically affects women. This, added to the aftershock of the coronavirus, presents a very complex panorama. The coronavirus exacerbated the crisis we are experiencing in the Pacific and revealed the overload it exerts on our bodies as women. We are mothers, wives, daughters and leaders, who take on the never-ending task of balancing and sustaining the social, community, political, and livelihood processes of our homes and communities. Despite our motivation, leadership, and drive, we face the health, economic, social, and psycho-emotional difficulties generated by the spread of the virus in precarious territories. The inequalities suffered by women in these lands are now more noticeable due to the following conditions: • The shortage of households • The increase in domestic and gender-based violence • The imminent risk of death, given by the lack of hospital infrastructure • Difficulty of access to connectivity for education • The psycho-emotional and mental health consequences Reducing poverty in the framework of this pandemic implies increasing awareness about gender inequalities and the impact of the precariousness of territorial infrastructure on their lives and communities; a social conscience and a state co-responsibility. The LGBTIA Population Resists Salvatore Laudicina, Buenaventura African Literature Laboratory and DALE Being an Afro-descendant and a member of the LGBTIA community in the Colombian Pacific implies a struggle on two fronts. As Newball Segura, a youth leader and member of the collective, Corporación Social Pacífico Diverso, says: “it means raising a single flag to fight discrimination.” The

LGBTIA population actively seeks to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus among the populations most in need. “We are aware of our social responsibility with our people. It is not only about demanding, but also about giving. That is the backbone of our leadership: contributing actions to change. There is so much to do. If we can contribute with one or more humanitarian aid, we will. We belong to Buenaventura.” adds Newball Segura. Although the situation demands priority actions, the present must also run its course. The pandemic cannot be an excuse to stop addressing other fronts; On the contrary, it must be an impetus for individual and collective vindication actions that contribute to this long-awaited socio-cultural change in the territory. Buenaventura is experiencing a historical moment, and not properly because of the virus. The union on these two fronts, of the LGBTIA and Afro-Colombian population amid the pandemic, makes it clear that new leaderships have been born in the Colombian Pacific. These leaderships have understood the power of their actions: what they do today must transcend time and create new processes that affect the social future of their communities. The crisis of the ecosystem and organizations in COVID-19. Non-profit organizations during the Crisis Ana Isabel Vargas Tutor, advisor and manager of Visible Hands Programs since 2013 COVID-19 has many faces: it started as a health crisis, consolidated as an economic crisis, and is becoming a humanitarian crisis. Many experts project the falls in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the countries and the losses of the companies, but very few have wondered about the situation of non-profit entities or philanthropic entities dedicated to the service of the community. What is happening to the sector that does not seek to enrich itself, but cannot survive if it does not receive income? Non-profit entities (ESALES) are losing a lot from the pandemic. A survey conducted at the end of March by the 57

Charities Aid Foundation of America, which consulted more than 550 ESALES located in 93 countries, found that 96.5% of them have been affected by the reduction in the contributions they receive. The main problem in the pandemic is the need to act urgently, so ESALES cannot plan for the aggravated needs of the communities they serve, but instead draw on the few immediate opportunities that remain. At this moment in time, creativity and reasonable creativeness are more important than ever, since only they will allow ESALES to identify new services and lines of action that allow them to survive and continue helping those who need it most. Today we have no established routes or safe roads. It must be understood that the return to a (new) normal will not be easy and linear, but rather a road with ups and downs. It is worth noting that, despite their multiple limitations, the ESALES are setting an example as they do everything, they can to continue carrying out their social work. The crisis has shown that the nonprofit sector is one of the few - or perhaps the only one supporting those most in need amid adversity. Although it may not seem like it, the crisis may be an opportunity for ESALES to strengthen. It is a matter of resilience, hard work, and creativity. Citizen and social organizations at risk of extinction. Giuliana Brayan, volunteer, assistant and coordinator at Visible Hands since 2011 In the midst of the health crisis, our leaders and their organizations are reinventing themselves. This has been the retelling of some of the stories. Despite the tears that these dialogues brought, we meet heroines and heroes of the common who do not allow themselves to be overcome by fatigue and continue to give their all for service. These and these leaders have not given up. On the contrary, they have reinvented themselves during the crisis. After the dialogues we have, it is clear to us that these organizations: 1. They have reaffirmed their commitment to the community. 2. They have had to clarify the obstacles that have been crossed, as well as the tools they want and can get, checking the effectiveness of the instruments that are at hand. 58

3. They have learned to embrace the term “pilot project”; They are aware that in this pandemic scenario there are several challenges, and that therefore the implementation tests are necessary to move to another level. 4. They know that they cannot afford a break from using social media. Right now, they are your best allies and you must come up with any creative method to make yourself known. 5. They recognize that together they are stronger. As a group, they can be and do more. With the support of others, they know that they can ask for help and persuade their communities to embark on this new adventure. The road is not easy, but it leads us solely and exclusively to move from speech to action. Our organizations, many of them cultural, are doing everything possible to reduce the risk of their extinction. Culture and Reinvention And the emotional infrastructure, what? Paula Moreno, Visible Hands President In recent weeks we have spoken with a sense of urgency about the hospital infrastructure. As citizens, we learned that the number of beds and respirators are issues that should matter to us, as well as the welfare and protection of medical personnel (many still without receiving their payment for several months); we feel the imperative to take care of those who take care of us. We have shown that the hospital infrastructure has multiple flaws and, in some regions, is collapsed, but a different type of infrastructure continues to sustain us: culture, as the emotional and spiritual support of this country. Without music, books, movies, movements, etc., how would we withstand the current conditions? However, in a paradoxical way, the most obvious becomes the most invisible and secondary. In cultural matters, what sustains our mental and emotional health seems irrelevant compared to the dimensions of the shock measures that have been taken. Social distancing affects the nature of many cultural expressions based on contact and closeness, for which

our cultural sector faces the great challenge of its reinvention; You must define a survival and sustainability strategy. In addition, it has the historical task of helping us understand, register and project this crisis, in which once again the cultural assumes the recreation of the human. The transformation exercise that is coming is and will be largely a cultural endeavor. Answers that correspond to the scale of what is at stake are urgently needed. Colombia is a cultural powerhouse, and we cannot allow that essential infrastructure to weaken. While the nature of art and culture has been —and more so in our context— resistance, this is a moment for transcendence. Today, in the Pacific, a growth in forced recruitment by illegal groups is reported, children in the region do not have connectivity for virtual classes, and now the cultural organizations that generated a real alternative are beginning to disappear. You must reinvent yourself, but also create conditions for it. The cultural agenda changed; there is no time to discuss the economy-culture dichotomy. The urgent thing is to preserve something basic and essential: cultural life. We have a unique opportunity to reduce cultural inequalities, which are also structural, to act in those municipalities where digital is not applied and culture is food and life preservers. As André Malraux said: “Culture is what, after death, continues to be life.” And music, what for? Darwin Perea Master’s Scholar in Cultural Management, responsible for Visible Hands Culture A song in times of confinement becomes a melody that embraces, accompanies, and provides unanticipated advice. A quarantined song can be like that friend who is always by your side when you need him, who makes you laugh and, at the same time, cry. In this time that we are going through, a note, an interval or a chord can change in a sudden remedy for any ailment. Mandatory quarantine has raised levels of depression and anxiety. Many have found in these pentagram broadcasts a soundscape of refuge and calm. The musical pieces that we play on social networks have become the air that many

breathe to find peace and avoid stress. Jordi Savall, a specialist in early music, shares a question in his writings: “How is it possible that enslaved people still wanted to sing and dance? The answer is very simple: singing and dancing, to the rhythm of music, opened a space for expression and freedom.” The lack of state support has pushed us as a union to seek new routes to obtain resources. I must admit that these aids meet some needs, but they are insufficient and keep us uncertain. Mariachis have figured out how to bring serenades, sometimes virtually. In our Pacific the streets of the neighborhoods are navigated at the mercy of gifts from residents. Others play to gain more followers or recognition, or simply out of a desire to interact with their listeners. Creativity and the characteristic of musicians has transcended to incredible levels throughout the quarantine. The union has been more united when it comes to generating content as it has been the best way to feel free. Freedom that implies happiness for the musicians; Without thinking, we communicate it to everyone who connects to see us. In the Pacific, the difficulties are greater, since we lack optimal connectivity to show and disseminate all the richness of our ancestral music. Freedom is the most longed for dream that our ancestors had and we still long for it. Amid the daily “reinventing” to which we are subjected, a term that already falls ill in the musical brotherhood, there are many lessons. The union that we have won will be useful to demand that the State pass laws that protect musicians and the entire cultural sector. In addition, collective creation allows disruptive ideas to be distilled for the benefit of all. I want to remind you that, at critical moments, great ideas are born. This is an opportunity to think, rethink, create, and act. It is time to motivate our intellect and enliven the box of ideas. In one of his songs, maestro Jairo Varela Martínez says that, “in good times and in bad there is always a laugh.” For this moment, colleagues, I am giving you a comma so that we can continue writing a beautiful musical story for ourselves and for our territories. May the desire to dream never fade. The importance of dreaming and visualizing what we want, Daydreaming is dreaming with your feet on the ground, to create concrete possibilities. Dreaming, in fact, was a word

used in ancient times as a synonym for “viewing with unusual clarity, order and meaning” images and events that were to be realized. So dreaming is being visionary.

We dream of a possible future built from the margins. We will work to make it so. We will lead that change so that it can be.

Therefore, it is time to be a visionary from a moral context that does not exclude anyone, that does not segregate or separate, but rather one that thinks of each future generation as a group of beings connected to a natural environment who must be respected and allow to transcend.

Some visions to build those new exact and concrete futures for this new decade are:

The Senegalese economist and writer Felwine Sarr recalled that, in his country, to face the coronavirus crisis, academics created working groups by fields to anticipate the impact in terms of transport, tourism, commerce, culture, and the informal sector. They were able to envision the best measures to guarantee their inhabitants more sustainable and stable income. “It is a great demonstration of the impact that civil society can have. When the world predicted the worst, we worked to provide a response tailored to the specificities of our societies… The pandemic showed us the radical need to change our relationship with ecology, overconsumption, and economic and industrial excess. The change will have to be expressed in concrete terms, through social action and collective force.” That’s right, and the dynamics show it. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream.” He said it with conviction, intensity, and with all the intention put into his words. His dream was so powerful that it transformed the known, broke ground, and bridged a momentous gap in history. Visible Hands also has big dreams. Once the current decade of transition is over, this new decade begins in which our dream will lead to the transformation of leaderships and will open the way to transcendence. The leaders connected to the Visible Hands networks are, in themselves, visionaries: they have a vision of the future dreamed of and forged by the resistance; They have talent and elements of judgment, desire and courage; they strive to change the current topics and difficulties to convert them into opportunities.

A commitment to intercultural and diverse leadership, avant-garde in its integrality. That is, a leadership that allows those who have remained outside to enter, both locally, regionally, and nationally as well as globally. This leadership is Afro-descendant, indigenous, mestizo, of the population in special conditions or persons with disabilities, as well as mostly women. This leadership is called to indicate the word elite and its negative connotation of exclusion, corruption and abuse for one of service, efficiency, and effective transformations. Its purpose is to put identities as active and integrate their power with moral and ethical authority. In our first decade we were more Afro descendant. In the next one we will be more comprehensive. We need multiple spokespersons on multiple agendas. As we have a commitment to the margins, we also commit to the other Pacific countries of the national and global geography. Our natural transition will be to continue in the Pacific but expanding our work to the Caribbean and critical urban centers, such as Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali. Consolidating our work on both coasts will be the goal. We will seek to articulate it with the nodes of diversity that correspond to the margins of great centers of power. Likewise, we will continue with our exchange and articulation with the African diaspora, even proposing a permanent international platform for Afroinnova, with nodes on the African continent, Europe, the United States, and Brazil. Colombia has a role to play in the next phase that opens towards racial equity. A vision focused on changing patterns, as well as seeking and materializing new solutions to old problems. A leadership network that is a catalyst for macro tasks to transform collapses such as public health, educational quality, water, and basic sanitation coverage, the formal economy, as well as working for the existence of a strengthened civil society. That is, everything that does not wait. Culture as the main asset will seek not only to change 59

narratives but also realities, as well as to give a line in the new development models, as well as in practices that define the political, social, and economic destiny of the region. We dream of a cultural sector that remains a retaining wall, but also a project to promote new forms of thought and action. Visible Hands, strengthened as a cutting-edge non-profit organization, and with a financial base for the next decade, will have a dispersed team and a headquarters that will become a great leadership center with a global perspective, and at the same time, in a cultural center, of thought and a lasting meeting place for those leaderships from the margins of the country. There it will be possible to co-create, exchange experiences, see each other, recognize each other, and articulate. Our future is poetic and aesthetic. We are visualizing it with the cultural and environmental richness of the communities and with the leaderships that have nurtured us with their hope during all these years. We also envision it with the resources, institutions, and practices that show that the future of the country arises from the margins, and that these will become centers of development and their own visions. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what we are betting on.

manosvisibles 10 AÑOS

Thankful Hands: Our Ten-Year Chronicle

Articles inside

Transformation stories

Our programs

The importance of dreaming and visualizing what we want

Ten years of advocacy and projection

Ten words that define us

Ten figures to understand our impact, where we are, and who has accompanied our path?

Making the margins the center