88 minute read
Transformation stories
TRANSFORMATION STORIES There are two adages that are intertwined with all its The leadership routes show the fruitful meeting of the complexity in the Colombian Pacific: the first affirms that diversities in that network of connections so that it is possible everyone is the architect of their own life; the second, that that, at the same time, a leader from the Pacific emerges the environment helps to determine the individual. and, from the other, a leader of a national process in the Both factors collide with a reality: in Colombia, far from occur from one side only: its fruits sprout for a humanity that the center, opportunities have historically been infrequent. transcends from a “you and us” to a “us”. However, and precisely due to the contradiction of living in invisible environments that have made the conditions In these years, these have been some of the bridges that of the inhabitants and their municipalities more difficult, Visible Hands has built. Their stories are not individual, nor the people who empower themselves in the regions and do they come from only one side. On the contrary, they are fully assume that they are architects of their own lives gain the stories of a network that is woven with a series of deeply value for their community and their leadership make them human bonds. There is no lie when saying that there are transformative elements. hundreds of stories like these. These are just a few examples.
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 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. political center of the country. The transformation does not 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.
FOR A RURAL, AGROINDUSTRIAL, AND SUSTAINABLE PACIFIC
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)
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 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.
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. 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.
BART VAN HOOF (Esbeek, Netherlands), 49 years old Professor at the Faculty of Business Administration from the University of Los Andes
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. 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. 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. 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
personal and community”
“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.
THE FIGURES FOR THE TRANSFORMATION
ÁLVARO ARROYO (Yurumanguí, Buenaventura), 29 years-old Visible Hands coordinator, Associate Researcher at Universidad de Los Andes
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.
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 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.”
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 (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
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. “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.
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.
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
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.
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.
“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. AURORA VERGARA (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).
Ecosystem of Transformation: Icesi University, Pacific Task Force, Visible Hands, Black Women Disrupt Platform, guest columnist for Semana Magazine and La Silla Vacía.
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
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. 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.
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
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. “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.
ANA ISABEL VARGAS
all part of one.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
ZOYLA SALAZAR (Cali, Valle del Cauca), 49 years old Financial Manager of Arroz Blanquita
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.
Ecosystem of transformation: Arroz Blanquita, Petronio Álvarez Festival
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, 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.” 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. 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. 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
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,
ZOYLA SALAZAR
social and collaborative philosophy,” she recalls. 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
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 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.
BLENNY VALECILLA
new history.
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
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.
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 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.
FERNANDO CEPEDA ULLOA
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 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.
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
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.” THE CONVERSION AND ENHANCEMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT HAROLD YUSTY CASTILLO (Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca), 38 years-old Gesampa, Commercial Manager
Leadership route: DALE, MingaLab
Transformation Ecosystem: Gesampa
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.
While that path seemed to dissolve, his heart continued to be linked to social and environmental work. In fact, at the age of 17 he had already joined the Community Action Board of his neighborhood and had led the youth group and participated in social activities. The increase in public order problems in Buenaventura prompted him to migrate to Buga with an aunt while he was studying Graphic Design. But his heart was in his hometown. He returned to dedicate himself to social work and with the idea of studying at the Universidad del Pacífico. It was not so clear
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 440,000 inhabitants, and became an alternative of economic sustenance for more than 220 families. Among Gesampa’s projects, one stands out: the Ecogol program, which finances registrations in children’s soccer tournaments with recycling and activates the connection with the sport of the children of Buenaventura. The goal that Harold Yusty intended to score on the opposite court is now being done socially. And that makes him very, very happy.
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
URIEL SÁNCHEZ
from the sport they take away the violence”, clarifies Uriel Sánchez, with pride.
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.”
As the northern regional director at CO2Cero, Uriel ended up working as an alternate member of the board 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?
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.
INNOVATION FOR THE CHANGE OF PARADIGMS
KATHERIN GIL (Quibdó, Chocó), 30 years-old Director of Young Creators of Chocó and Coordinator of MIT CoLAB Quibdó
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
Ecosystem of Transformation: CoLaB MIT, Young Creators of Chocó
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.
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.
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 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.
“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.
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
JOSÉ CARLOS ÁLVAREZ
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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 municipalities 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.”
LORENA TORRES
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,
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.
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 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
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.”
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 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.
NEW FUTURES, NEW LEADERSHIP, AND NEW TRANSFORMATIONS
We Are Already Writing Our Future 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
“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
“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)
“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)
“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) “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)
OUR CHALLENGE: LEADING THE INVINCIBLE
For ethnic communities and many excluded communities, the current lockdown is not the first. There are other pandemics that have marked its existence.
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? 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.
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. 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
