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
