The executive director of ACI Medellín, Cristina Zambrano, said that “in 2024, we achieved milestones that position Medellín as a global leader in innovation and sustainability. We reestablished strategic relationships with countries such as South Korea, Switzerland, and Singapore, and reaffirmed our leadership in networks such as C40, where we promote priority climate and energy projects for the city.”

The technology sector led these achievements with 56% of investment projects, consolidating its position as a driver of development for Medellín. Companies from other parts of the world continue to show their confidence in the city.
Furthermore, companies from countries such as the United States, Germany, Canada, Chile, and Mexico were attracted by its human talent, its articulated ecosystem, and its strategic location.

In international cooperation, $3 million USD was secured to develop 20 projects with Germany and Japan, among others, which focused on sustainability and social and economic development. This commitment was reflected in initiatives such as implementing Urban Protected Air Zones and energy efficiency in public buildings, funded by the C40 Network, with an investment of $250,000 USD.

2024 also marked Medellín’s return to global leadership, with the commitment to the recovery of the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, alongside the World Economic Forum, and the district’s return to the C40 Steering Committee. In addition, the city hosted the World Data Forum, a unique event that attracted more than 3,000 visitors from around the world.

In the educational field, a partnership with Rockwell Automation and the Ministry of Education enabled technology awareness sessions to be held for 3,050 students in Delaware public schools, fostering their interest in the technology industry. On the other hand, the Medellín and its international allies event brought together more than
150 international leaders, business leaders, and industry representatives to learn about the District Development Plan, promoting strategic projects for the city.

With these achievements, Medellín not only strengthens its leadership in innovation and sustainability but also establishes itself as a reliable destination for international cooperation and investment, projecting itself toward growth and social transformation.

Photo credit: City of Medellín.

“I have requested the protocolary resignation of ministers and directors of administrative departments. There will be some changes in the cabinet to ensure greater compliance with the program mandated by the people,” wrote the president.

This request follows the tensions caused by a televised cabinet meeting on February 4, which exposed internal disagreements among government officials and particular discomfort with the involvement in the government of Laura Sarabia, a key figure in Petro’s team and recently appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as the newly appointed Chief of Staff, Armando Benedetti.

Following this event, several ministers and officials submitted their resignation letter before Petro made his official request on February 9, including Gloria Inés Ramírez, Minister of Labor; Juan David Correa, Minister of Culture; and Juan Fernando Cristo, Minister of the Interior. In his resignation letter, Cristo thanked Petro for the opportunity to be part of the government and emphasized the need to prioritize key commitments in the remaining 18 months of the administration.

Jorge Rojas, Director of the Presidential Administrative Department (DAPRE), and Susana Muhamad, Minister of Environment, also resigned. In an interview with El Tiempo, Muhamad stated that her resignation was motivated by Armando Benedetti’s appointment as Chief of Staff. She expressed concerns about his political representation and the trust needed for governance, saying, “He does not inspire confidence in me, personally, both in terms of political representation and in the trust necessary to govern within the Council of Ministers.”

After Petro’s February 9 announcement, additional officials submitted their protocolary resignations. Carlos Carrillo, Director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) announced his resignation via X/Twitter, motivating their colleagues to also proceed: “I believe that the entire cabinet and high-ranking government officials should submit their resignations without delay.”

In a post via Twitter/X Laura Sarabia confirmed her resignation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, position she held for just a few days: “With the purpose of allowing the president to make the decisions he deems most appropriate, I submit my protocolary resignation, ” she pointed.

Among the officials that have also resigned are: Andrés Camacho, Minister of Mine; Ángela María Buitrago, Minister of Justice; Martha Carvajalino, Minister of Agriculture; and Daniel Rojas Medellín, Minister of Education.

Headline photo: Image from the televised cabinet meeting on February 4 (Photo: Presidencia de la República)

Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation (Photo courtesy: Viva Air)

Major Colombian brands such as Totto (backpacks and luggage), Nosotras (feminine hygiene) and low-cost airline Viva Air’s nonprofit organization, the Viva Air Foundation have joined forces in coordination with Colombia’s Ministry of Education to deliver and donate 3,502 school supply kits, 500 feminine hygiene kits, and 1,000 backpacks, to youngsters in the Colombian department of La Guajira, within the framework of the Colombian government’s “Teaming Up for Education” strategy.

La Guajira is home to several of Colombia’s most well-known indigenous groups such as the Wayúu, Kogui, and Arhuaco people, still with us today. Breathtakingly beautiful, much of the area is challenged ecologically with an arid, almost desert climate, and socially due to its relatively remote location bordering Venezuela, making it an attractive area for smugglers, brigands, and insurgents. The region has undeniably suffered from a lack of attention or investment from Colombia’s central government, making support from the private sector even more crucial.

The donations were transported on three Viva Air flights that took off from the airline’s main headquarters in the Medellín suburb of Rionegro and from the Colombian capital of Bogotá to the La Guajira capital of Riohacha on April 14, 15 and 16. Slightly more than 4,500 care packages were officially consigned by the Colombian Vice Minister of Education, Constanza Alarcón, and representatives of the Viva Air Foundation to 11 schools in the municipalities of Dibulla, Manaure and Riohacha, with the aim of improving the living conditions of La Guajira youth, and empowering them to continue their educational trajectory.

Kogui youths selling fresh coconut water in Tayrona National Park, Colombia (Photo credit: Loren Moss)

“Being part of this project led by the Ministry of Education fills us with pride, because together we are changing the future of children and adolescents in Colombia. The initiatives of the Viva Air Foundation are focused on the well-being of vulnerable populations and the construction of community spaces for education; and being part of this strategy, we are achieving this objective. At Viva we are teaming up for education together with public and private entities that have the same goal: to guarantee education for those who need it most,” said Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation.

These deliveries will directly benefit young residents of the municipalities of Dibulla, Manaure and Riohacha, so that they can overcome the challenge of acquiring school supplies in these rural, often isolated areas.

The $3.9 million USD honor, one of two Yidan Prizes handed out Sunday night during a gala at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, is among the world’s largest and will go toward funding the ongoing work of her Fundación Escuela Nueva organization, which has been advancing rural education in Colombia and at least 16 other countries since 1987.

Photo: Vicky Colbert was awarded the first Yidan Prize for Educational Development by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam. (Credit: Jared Wade)

“I want to thank Mr. Charles Yidan, this wonderful Yidan Prize Foundation, and all of you that have accompanied me in this wonderful celebration,” said Colbert on Sunday during her acceptance speech in Hong Kong. “I have no doubt that the initiatives of the Yidan Prize Foundation will be greatly successful and that they will make a significant contribution to the quality of education around the world.”

The award is the flagship effort of the Yidan Prize Foundation, which was formally launched last year by Chinese entrepreneur and philanthropist Charles Chen Yidan. The billionaire is best known for being a co-founder of Tencent, the Shenzhen-based holding company now worth half a trillion dollars that he helped build beginning in 1998.

While less of a household name in the West, the company has grown into one of the globe’s largest digitally focused firms. Its tentacles extend into everything from telecommunications, popular Chinese messaging app WeChat, and mobile gaming to physical supermarkets and equity investments in firms including Spotify and Snapchat.

Chen has diverted his attention to philanthropy in recent years, however, and the Yidan Prize Foundation is set up for years to come with an endowment of around $320 million USD.

Charles Chen Yidan, co-founder of Tencent and founder of the Yidan Prize Foundation. (Credit: Jared Wade)

“Vicky has done a lot to promote education,” Chen told Finance Colombia during an interview in Hong Kong. “I have been talking to her, and in the process I have come to appreciate her passion in her work in the field of education. She has done a very innovative project — with a very limited amount of resources. She has worked hard. Her student-focused approach has been a very effective innovation.”

He created the prize — and purposefully made it so lucrative — to push for progress and attract more attention to the best ideas about education from around the world. “Pedagogical theory” like the Escuela Nueva philosophy employed by Colbert, as well as scientific research like that conducted by Yidan Prize for Educational Research winner and Stanford University professor Carol Dweck, rarely receives significant mainstream attention. But by attaching such a lofty sum to the award, he hopes it can both fund their ongoing efforts and drive further conversations around these themes.

IN-DEPTH: Exploring the Escuela Nueva Methodology and Pioneering Work of Vicky Colbert

Colbert created the Escuela Nueva methodology in the mid-1970s following her master’s studies in sociology at Stanford University, and it was later adopted as the national policy for rural education in Colombia. It spread to at least 20,000 schools in the Andean nation and would go on to become highly influential in other Latin American countries including Brazil and Guatemala.

The methodology, which is predicated on student-focused learning and teamwork as opposed to teacher lectures, has been widely praised and supported by the World Bank. Other global organizations, including the United Nations, Clinton Foundation, and World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), have recognized Colbert for her work with Escuela Nueva, which in recent years has spread to Vietnam, Zambia, and other locations. Educators in the United States and China have also shown great interest in adopting the methodology, according to Colbert.

She has seen firsthand the major progress that Colombia has had in rural education since Escuela Nueva supplanted the traditional methods used in the small, multi-grade classrooms dotting the country’s mountains and jungles in the 1970s. “Teachers did not have specific training to handle several grades simultaneously,” said Colbert. “It was like a failed business: no results. [But] what started as a constraint became an opportunity for challenging massively the conventional teacher-centric model.”

Vicky Colbert speaking with one of the young students at the Escuela Nueva school Sede Cabaña in rural Colombia, where kids from first through fifth grade all share a single classroom. (Credit: Jared Wade)

Colbert and Dweck both announced during the summit that they would use the funding from the prize on their work and even begin to collaborate together in an effort to expand their impact and help build a community around the Yidan Prize.

The Escuela Nueva pioneer stresses, however, that the money is not a cure all. It will help as an investment into the foundation’s future, but she is now challenging both public officials in Colombia and other like-minded international organizations to help build on this award with further project funding.

Chen, speaking on Monday in Hong Kong, where his foundation held a summit of teachers and educators from around the world in concert with the award ceremony, noted that he created to prize to “pay tribute to revolutionary achievements.” But, just as vitally, he said he wants the Yidan Prize to be ”forward-looking” as a means to kickstart subsequent work. “We aspire to promote ingenious ideas and share outstanding outcomes so they may be applied on a larger international scale, creating the greatest global impact,” said Chen.

In addition to the gala ceremony to formally award Colbert and Dweck with their Yidan Prize, the educational summit featured speakers including Cherie Blair, former U.K. first lady and Asian University of Woman Chancellor; Martin Lau, president of Tencent Holdings; Ahmed El Eissa, education minister of Saudi Arabia; and Jaime Saavedra, head of the education global practice at the World Bank Group and former education minister of Peru.

Throughout the Yidan Prize Summit, those mentioned and dozens of others continued to praise Colbert for her remarkable achievements. “Vicky Colbert, founder of Colombia’s Fundación Escuela Nueva, pioneered a groundbreaking new educational model that reformed rural schools in Latin America,” said Chen. “Her conscientious work at the frontline of education reveals deep insight on how to enter the kingdom of knowledge.”

For more than four decades, Vicky Colbert has dedicated herself to improving rural education. Her work began in the 1970s, when the situation in her native Colombia was grim. Guerrilla conflict and disorder had already become the prevailing reality in many areas and, combined with scarce resources and under-development, millions of children were entering adulthood without the knowledge and skills to make a decent living.

Vicky Colbert, founder of Fundación Escuela Nueva, was the first recipient of the Yidan Prize for Educational Development. (Credit: Jared Wade)

Colbert was young and idealistic. Blond and fair-skinned, the Bogotá-born sociologist wanted to make a difference. She studied at top schools and worked to find solutions. As things progressed, she started to see a new path forward.

But back then, even on her most ambitious days, Colbert never envisioned just how much impact she would eventually make.

While she has had many successes, the latest came in the form of the Yidan Prize for Educational Development. This educational honor was awarded for the first time this year and is already among the world’s most lucrative education awards, giving Colbert and her Escuela Nueva Foundation roughly $3.9 million USD in funding — a massive windfall in a realm where the budgets and grant money are never enough.

This is far from the first award for Colbert or Escuela Nueva (“New School”), which has become an internationally acclaimed teaching model whose principles have been adopted in more than a dozen countries since it has proven its worth in Colombia.

In 2005, she earned the first-ever Clinton Global Citizen Award, a prestigious honor now given out annually by the foundation of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She later won the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Prize in 2009 — the first time that the Qatar Foundation handed out its global education prize.

It seems that whenever a new prominent global recognition is created, Colbert’s name tops the list. And so it was this year for the new Yidan Prize created by Chinese entrepreneur and philanthropist Charles Chen Yidan.

Yidan has said that one reason education is close to his heart is because his grandmother never learned to read. It took just two generations of studious learning, however, for the family to watch Chen not only earn degrees in applied chemistry and economic law but use his knowledge to help develop one of the globe’s biggest companies. With no need to work any longer, the billionaire co-founder of conglomerate Tencent wanted to use his money to help fund education.

Colbert was the perfect recipients for the inaugural award. On top of the work her foundation has done in Colombia, Dorothy Gordon, head of the Yidan Prize judging panel, praised Escuela Nueva for continuing to expand to other areas of the world. Gordon was impress with how “this model has spread, making small, under-resourced rural schools effective in many Latin American nations.”

A typical Escuela Nueva classroom, featuring students of two grade levels sitting in group desks and actively working through their lessons. (Credit: Jared Wade)

The Escuela Nueva Methodology

Escuela Nueva is a learning methodology. In scholarly circles, it would be referred to as a pedagogy, and the method is based upon several core principles that have elevated it into a global standard of excellence.

At its best, Escuela Nueva aims to instill values — responsibility, tolerance, discipline, community — as much as academics. Due to the small class sizes and multi-grade classrooms (known as “multigrados” in Colombia) common in rural areas, there are always a few students who finish their lessons first and a few that lag behind.

This is common the world over, and Escuela Nueva confronts this fact with a collaborative approach. It promotes teamwork through ongoing open dialogue and hexagonal worktables that force children to face one another. The design encourages the quick-finishers to assist their peers. In this way, normal human social dynamics allow for leaders to develop and students to view collective problem solving as the default way to complete a task.

Vicky Colbert, during a recent interview in her humble Bogotá office, said she believes the benefits of this approach are even more pronounced in the modern era. Almost all professions require people to work together on projects with people from different backgrounds, different intelligence levels, and different disciplines. The Escuela Nueva style sets children up to operate this way from a very early age. And she says these are the skills useful in the workplaces of today — not being able to retain information dictated in long lectures, memorize book facts, and prove yourself once every two months on an end-all-be-all test that will define success or failure.

Tests are of course a part of the Escuela Nueva methodology. It is not some new-age alternative learning experience. And the curriculum is not revolutionary. The signature workbooks contain the same information and exercises expected in any elementary school lesson plan. Perhaps more than almost anything, these simple workbooks are critical to Escuela Nueva’s success.

The Escuela Nueva workbooks have been essential for helping the program scale to 20,000 rural schools and promoting student-centered learning in the classroom. (Credit: Jared Wade)

Colbert initially created the workbooks as a rudimentary how-to guide for teachers but they have changed over the years — with the help of government planners — to serve as a functional roadmap that can walk children through their entire academic year. “She has transformed conventional, teacher-centered schooling practices to a new learner-centered model,” said Gordon of the Yidan Prize judging panel.

Teachers don’t just sit back and watch the students fill in the books, however. They explore the materials together and discuss the themes in a way that resembles a conversation more than a series of instructions. “I think the real role of a teacher,” said Colbert, “is to be a good coach, to stimulate your students, to know their strengths, to know their weaknesses. It’s not to spend so much time giving information. Information comes packaged in so many other ways now.”

From her office in Bogotá, which is cluttered with medals, international prizes, and photos of Colbert alongside the likes of Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II, she continued to stress the essential importance of this concept. “We’re going from the transmission of knowledge to the social construction of knowledge,” she said. “So it’s promoting more child-centered learning, personalized learning. Not everybody learns the same thing at the same time. There are different learning rhythms. You construct knowledge together through dialogue and interaction, but you have to have instruments and strategies to do it right. So, if you do child-centered education without having materials or mechanisms, it’s just theory.”

For all its good ideas — and even despite its name — Colbert admits that Escuela Nueva is nothing new. When it comes to theory, it is mostly still just a means of teaching young people the same type of knowledge that kids have been learning for the past century all over the world.

“I’m not an inventor starting an idea,” she said, citing the pioneering efforts of Dr. Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and Lev Vygotsky. “I had to build on what already existed…We know the theory — but the theory only comes to the elite schools in our regions, not the poorest of the poor schools.”

At her core, Colbert is a pragmatist. She is enthusiastic about the high-minded values and community-based aspects of Escuela Nueva, but ultimately describes it simply as a “proven solution to improve quality education.”

Since the beginning, Colbert had her eye on creating something that would remain viable in three ways: technically, politically, and financially. Technically meant that it must be easy to implement and teach. Financially meant it couldn’t be too expensive. And politically meant navigating labor union issues and surviving the whims of the election cycle.

“Anything we did, we could do in the 34,000 rural schools in Colombia,” said Colbert. More than even the methods themselves, impact and scale were the foundation of Escuela Nueva. “From the outset, we wanted to influence national policy — not to have just a nice little project.”

Beryl Levinger, who says elements of the educational principles she helped craft decades ago in Colombia alongside Colbert are still in use at Middlebury College in the United States, credits the Fundacion Escuela Nueva fonder for always remaining focused on this vision. “We created a pedagogy,” Levinger said in an interview with Middlebury. “But it was Vicky who became a vocal advocate for this methodology and transformed it into a worldwide movement.”

Two young students enjoy some recess time during their school day at Sede Barragán, a rural school in Quindio where four teachers lead Escuela Nueva lessons for around 80 kids across six grade levels. (Credit: Jared Wade)

A Good Idea Becomes National Policy

As someone who started out as a sociologist, and earned a master’s degree from Stanford University, Vicky Colbert has always seen the educational journey as more than just a personal achievement. To her, it underpins everything. “Without quality, basic education, you cannot achieve anything,” said Colbert. “You cannot achieve social, economic, or cultural development — nor peace nor democracy. So we need quality, basic education. I’m totally convinced of that. Without quality, basic education it would be very difficult for a country to reach other goals.”

In the 1970s, public education in even the largest cities in Colombia was lacking. But she was more concerned about the rural areas that in many cases barely had functional classrooms. There was no guarantee of universal basic education from the government, and in the schools that were managing to operate, one teacher was likely overseeing dozens of children ranging from five to 13 years old. Nobody was doing anything about this deficiency. “There were many schools that were invisible to educational planners,” she said.

Fixing these issues was the genesis of Escuela Nueva, and something she realized she could do better outside of government than in the first role she held for a short time in the Colombian Ministry of Education. Colbert began developing the core principles along with a Colombian teacher named Óscar Mogollón and Beryl Levinger, who initially came to Colombia as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and development worker before later becoming an international studies professor at Middlebury College.

Together, they started building on what already existed and trying to forge a consensus among different stakeholders in the country. “It wasn’t easy,’ said Colbert, but they eventually found funding for a pilot project in the three Andean regions of Cundinamarca, Boyacá, and Norte de Santander.

The results started to impress the decision-makers in Bogotá. In addition to performance score improvement, dropout rates fell and fewer kids were being held back to repeat grades. In time, the progress was undeniable, and the Escuela Nueva method became the national policy for rural education in all of Colombia. It was instituted into some 20,000 schools, and this monumental achievement created the momentum that took Escuela Nueva beyond the country’s borders.

It gained international acclaim after the World Bank, which had earlier provided a loan to help the program flourish in Colombia, in 1989 named Escuela Nueva as a global standard of successful educational innovation. The early indicators highlighted great potential and only looked better as time went on. One fact Colbert recites proudly is that, according to an 1998 study from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Colombia had risen to rank second, behind Cuba, in Latin America in terms of providing the best primary education to rural students. The study also showed that Colombia was a global outlier by having the bulk of its rural schools outperforming its urban schools.

As the word got out, countries from throughout the region — Brazil, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, and more — started sending representatives to Colombia to see what everyone was raving about. More than a dozen nations would eventually adopt the methods to some degree. International organizations kept arriving as well, including more World Bank agencies, UNESCO, UNICEF, and USAID.

Colbert would become vice minister of education of Colombia in the early 1980s, which helped to further embed Escuela Nueva into the fabric of the nation. She would also work in a high-level leadership role in the region for UNESCO. But eventually she wanted to be home overseeing her life’s work because the climate of the country was changing.

Even more than the previous decade, the 1980s were a chaotic time in Colombia. Just as the rapid rise of the drug trade hit, there was also an increased push for decentralized government. With the nation becoming torn apart and local politics beginning to assert more influence, the nascent Foundation Escuela Nueva needed to retain the confidence of federal bureaucrats in Bogotá but also launch efforts to win over thousands of local mayors and officials. “It started becoming debilitated in some regions,” she said, “and stronger in others…I wanted to get back into the picture in Colombia, and not let Escuela Nueva fade.”

There was so much to be done and she believed her program was on the cusp of making even greater impact — just when war-torn Colombia needed it most. “We wanted to continue innovating,” she said. “We want to adapt it to new contexts and populations. We want to adapt it to the urban areas also. We want to adapt it for displaced children caused by our conflict.”

Isabela Blandon Bravo, the 11-year-old class president of Sede Barragán. Here, as at all Escuela Nueva schools, student government is considered fundamental to instilling leadership and autonomy in young students. (Credit: Jared Wade)

Escuela Nueva in the Real World

This focus on scalability — led by one individual’s tenacity — is what allowed Escuela Nueva to develop into a global model of success. The classroom style and underlying educational principles, however, are what most kids adore. Test scores and student retention rates in a spreadsheet can impress bureaucrats. But nothing that can match the smile on a proud child’s face.

There are plenty of teeth showing in an Escuela Nueva classroom, where accountability means students are in charge of keeping attendance. Rather than the teacher calling out names, the kids personally mark the calendar each morning when they arrive. If they miss a day, they get a note from their parents explaining the absence and put it in the “excuse” box.

A large priority is placed on student government. The children elect a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. Kids from the lower grades are encouraged to begin participating early and enthusiastically. The schools also set up “work committees” that can include categories like sports and recreation, the environment, and even cleaning. Each group consists of a few representatives who plan events and activities. From “peace week” and kite festivals to science fairs and tree-planting days, organizing the committee agenda aims to instill values and give more students a leadership role in the classroom community.

Ethics and respect for the community become more than platitudes. The children embrace these core values. The classroom aims to instill citizenship — not merely scholarship.

All of this is on display at a small school in Quindio, the nation’s smallest department (which is the equivalent of a state or province). Quindio has become an iconic symbol of Colombian coffee country, a gorgeous green and slope-filled Andean mountain region that has managed to largely sidestep the worst damage of the armed conflict. Though tourists now flock to the working coffee town of Salento to see how beans are harvested, Quindio remains sparsely developed apart from one modern highway that runs through the region. The bulk of the families living here are poor and subsist as campesinos, working land they don’t own to carve out a meager living.

According to the local government, 208 schools in Quindio employ the Escuela Nueva method, and the Yidan Prize organizers arranged a press visit there to show reporters two of these locations. One is called Sede Barragán, a school of around 80 kids located about 40 minutes outside the departmental capital of Armenia. Sitting among towering mountain peaks, multiple rivers, and tropical fruit farms, the building itself is modest, but colorful and designed in the style of the vibrant red, blue, and yellow structures typical in Salento.

Sede Barragán is small and, like many rural Colombian schools, lacks resources. But the students take great pride in their school, which features the colors and design typical of buildings throughout coffee country. (Credit: Jared Wade)

Isabela Blandon Bravo, an 11-year-old, is the class president of Sede Barrangán. She formerly went to school in Medellín and misses some things about the urban setting but has adjusted to rural life. She has become a leader who her classmates look up to, and Isabela’s dream is to become a doctor. She thinks she might like to practice medicine in another country one day. France currently stands as her top pick.

While she may never make it to Paris, she will soon be moving on. This school ends at sixth grade, so she will be transferring to a different location, probably one of the larger schools in Armenia that doesn’t use the same teaching methods. But even though Isabela will have to adapt, Alva Lucia Orozco, the school’s head teacher, expects her to thrive in any environment.

Orozco has seen the difference first hand. While she is now among Escuela Nueva’s biggest evangelists, she has been teaching at the same location for four decades — long before the methodology came to Sede Barragán. “I am a part of the furniture,” said Orozco. In her view, the kids who leave this building now are much better prepared for the real world than those who she taught in traditional ways.

Vicky Colbert explains it plainly. “The most important part is people working in teams,” said Colbert. “I think that’s one of the most outstanding 21st Century skills. So what we started 40 years ago, now it’s the type of education everybody wants.”

Orozco’s first job is teaching students, but she also instructs the school’s other teachers on how to adapt to the Escuela Nueva style. “We’ve learned that teachers learn better from other teachers,” she said. Going over educational philosophy is key, and she has watched her colleagues, including Gloria Morena Zuluaga, grow more comfortable over time. Monthly meetings focus more on mentorship and open discussion more than detailed course planning.

There is always some situation that needs to be fixed, and they work together, often with help from the students, to overcome obstacles. “Colombians are inventors,” said Zuluaga. “We have so many problems that we have to look for new solutions. Every time we see a problem, we see an answer.”

Zuluaga has worked at the school, teaching all subjects to the second and third graders, for four and a half years. Though she now loves the learning style, at the beginning she was thrilled to start working at Sede Barragán for one reason: because it was a seven-minute drive from her house as opposed to the 45-minute motorbike ride she formerly endured to her previous school.

Many of the students also live in the nearby small town of Caicedonia. Though close, it lies across the departmental line in Valle de Cauca, a department in western Colombia that is much more plagued by drug-trade violence and conflict. But whether their home life is wonderful or trying, Zuluaga says that the attitudes she sees from students in her Escuela Nueva classroom stand apart from what she typically witnessed at her old school. “The kids are autonomous, and they are happy,” she said.

While Zuluaga had some experience in Escuela Nueva before transferring into Sede Barragán, many teachers who arrive in a new location know nothing about it. Most adjust. Some struggle. This is why in-the-field teacher training is such a core principle of a method that above all else relies on the instructor buy-in.

If the average teacher cannot understand the methodology and work within a student-centric guidebook environment, the kids will suffer. Because there are few options in a rural community. “We have to work with the teachers that are there,” said Colbert. “We cannot have a Ph.D. in the middle of the jungle.”

The nearby Escuela Nueva school Sede Cabaña is so small that kids from first through sixth grade all share a single classroom. (Credit: Jared Wade)

Escuela Nueva Embraces Urban Planning

Since the early days of Escuela Nueva, the rural population of Colombia has shrunk in terms of percentage of people living outside the cities. Decades of guerrilla conflict, paramilitary violence, and drug trafficking pushed so many people out of their villages and farming communities. Some found better lives in cities. Many others now live in slums and impoverished communities on the outskirts of Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali.

Along with the more than 260,000 people killed during Colombia’s half-century of conflict, at least 7.7 million have been displaced, according to the UN Refugee Agency. This is the second largest figure in the world, behind Syria (with 12.2 million). By comparison, there are 4.7 million displaced Afghans and 4.2 million displaced Iraqis.

Demographic restructuring hasn’t diminished rural need, however. In many ways, Colbert sees serving the students of Quindio — and areas with even lower population density, like the Amazon and Pacific jungle department of Chocó — as more important than ever. “Colombia has become urbanized, so there are not so many children [in rural areas],” she said. “But, still, these schools require special treatment.”

But Escuela Nueva has been expanding and evolving. Colbert has pushed to adapt the methodology for the city environment with Escuela Activa Urbana, which looks to bring similar change to the millions of students packed into Colombia’s sprawling urban metropolises. This has been part of the foundation’s work for decades but it is now taking on increasing importance.

Otoniel Morales Benjumea now works with the local education ministry but formerly served as the principal of Escuela Normal Superior del Quindio, a secondary school that has employed Escuela Nueva techniques in Armenia. Home to around 300,000 people, the Quindio capital is a small city by Colombian standards, but Morales said it brought positive changes to his former school, particularly among the most troubled kids.

He recalls one period when Normal Superior took in six students who had been kicked out of other educational institutions. Some of these “street kids” took to the program and began to excel. These type of adolescents may lack formal education and classroom discipline, but the group structure of Escuela Nueva can be comforting. They are accustomed to a fast-paced, sensory-rich environment.

Lectures and memorization challenges bore them and add to the inferiority they feel in a formal academic world. But interactive, communal learning lets them display their interpersonal smarts and mental dexterity — to the teacher and, more importantly, to themselves. This fosters curiosity, said Morales, and a willingness to explore potentially uncomfortable workbook lessons.

Such experience taught him to stop looking at the arrival of a troubled kid as a new problem to manage. Instead, he began to view it as an opportunity to reach someone who had fallen through the traditional system. “We want to change the world with this project,” said Morales.

Vicky Colbert believes that Escuela Nueva never could have become such a success without great teachers like Gloria Morena Zuluaga of Sede Barragán. (Credit: Jared Wade)

Escuela Nueva’s Global Future

The experiences of Quindio highlight why educators throughout the world are looking to adopt Nueva Escuela principles. Vicky Colbert lights up when recalling how her philosophy spread to locations like Guatemala and Brazil in its early days. More recently, she has traveled to Mexico, and talked extensively with the governments of Vietnam, Chile, and Zambia, where technical assistance has been offered to set up a program.

These high-level discussions are the backbone of kickstarting programs in new countries due to the same impact and scalability dynamics she encountered in Colombia in the 1970s. But Colbert now also focuses on partnering with other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) when moving into new areas.

There are multiple reasons that this has been a better approach than setting up a local Escuela Nueva outpost. First, it simply cuts down on overhead and resources. While it would be great to have the foundation’s boots on the ground across the globe, funding can be better spent elsewhere.

Second comes political risk. Ultimately, partnering with federal governments is the way to have the biggest impact. They are the only ones in a country that can install a nationwide rollout. But the downside is much greater — a lesson Colbert learned in Brazil after the public officials who championed the program left office.

Brazil’s administration turnover, mass corruption scandals, and budgetary nightmares in recent years haven’t fully curtailed the foundation’s efforts in the country. At least 10,000 schools in the Portuguese-speaking country, under the name “Escola Ativa,” have used Escuela Nueva methods. But collaborating with established local NGOs and other private sectors stakeholders gives Colbert more confidence. They have staying power. And this helps ensure that the hard work spent laying the foundation for new programs won’t stall out with the changing winds of the next election.

In Mexico, Escuela Nueva now works with Fundación Azteca. In Zambia, it works with the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed). “In the case of Brazil, I should have had an organization from the private sector to work with, because innovations are very vulnerable to political and administrative changes,” said Colbert.

Despite such concerns, these days, the work is now more about expanding intelligently than fighting to break down roadblocks. After more than four decades of development, the challenge is no longer about convincing people that Escuela Nueva works. It’s about keeping up with demand.

This is why Colbert was overjoyed when she got the call about winning the Yidan Prize and the $3.9 million USD in funding that comes along with it. She hopes this can serve as something of a seed-round investment that attracts even more resources and partnerships — including more public support within Colombia — to kickstart a new, even-grander era for Fundación Escuela Nueva.

The interest is certainly there. Even the biggest country on earth wants to get involved. “There has been so much interest in China. So much interest,” she said. “I’ve been invited almost every year to go to China because they’re very interested in the Escuela Nueva model, especially for the rural areas.”

Though she has other priorities, Colbert says she has been flattered that even U.S. states, including California and New Mexico, have come calling to partner with the organization. “We want to work with the poorest of the poor children in developing countries,” said Colbert.

At an age when most are looking forward to retirement, Colbert shows no signs of slowing down. Even though the long journey has taken Escuela Nueva beyond the wildest dreams of the wide-eyed young woman who set off for Stanford University in the 1970s, there is still has so much work to be done.

Colbert is eager to continue the mission. And best of all, she is no longer alone. There is a growing group of supporters and educators, in Colombia and throughout the world, working toward the same goal. “This is my life project — and not only mine,” said Colbert. “But it’s a collective life project of many wonderful teachers that have been with me for so many, many years.”

The Seattle-based company reportedly plans to build a local team of account executives, solution architects, and support staff, among other positions, to further win business in what it calls a growing market.

Already, the firm lists Publicar, Bancolombia, and Infovalmer among the customers it currently provides with cloud-related services in Colombia. It also counts the Colombian Institution for the Evaluation of Education (ICFES), an agency within the nation’s Ministry of Education, as a client.

Photo: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos continues to expand his empire with a second Amazon Web Services office opening in Latin America. (Credit: Amazon)

In a statement, Amazon Web Services highlighted the “growing demand and acceleration of cloud computing services” in the country and said its goal will be “supporting Colombian clients on the path to adoption and transformation.”

Colombian officials have championed the significance of the arrival. “This is a very important vote of confidence in the country and an invitation to companies to enter the dynamics of innovation,” said Felipe Jaramillo, president of the national business promotion agency ProColombia. He added that “it opens opportunities to generate quality employment for great Colombian talent, specialized in the IT sector.”

BN Americas has reported that the company may soon open an office in Chile as well.

Outside of Brazil, Amazon Web Services also maintains availability zones for its infrastructure in five other locations in the Americas: Northern California, Ohio, Oregon, Northern Virginia, and Central Canada.

Its other geographic regions across the world include Germany, Ireland, China, India, Japan, Australia, Korea, and Singapore.

Giha, a University of Los Andes-educated economist who has spend the past two years in charge of Colciencias, the nation’s science and technology research agency, will take over the ministry immediately

“It’s a pride — an honor — and it’s a huge responsibility,” said Giha. “I want to energize a topic that is a priority for the country, and for me personally, with an excellent team.”

Yaneth Giha Tovar, Colombia’s Minister of Education.

Parody stepped down from her post days after Colombians rejected President Santos’ peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in a plebiscite on October 2.

She had been a leader of the “Yes” campaign to raise support for the deal and ended up being the only cabinet member to be replaced following the humiliating result. Parody, one of the most high-profile LGBTQ voices in Colombia, had also faced hostility and personal attacks throughout the year from those who criticized her priorities as head of the education ministry.

Yaneth Giha has now taken over after the position was vacant for more than a month. “I welcome you to the cabinet so that you continue to work for education,” said President Santos.

In addition to her background in economics and serving at the Ministry of Education as vice-minister of preschool, basic, and middle education, Giha has extensive expertise in security.

She earned a master’s degree in war studies from King’s College in London and a specialization in conflict resolution from Javeriana University in Bogotá. In government, she has worked in the National Planning Department‘s military forces division and in the Defense Ministry as deputy minister of strategy.

“The president put a vote of confidence in me because this is one of the most important portfolios of this government,” said Giha. “Education is the center and the linchpin of much of what is being done.”

The cabinet-level head of schools had taken the lead role in promoting the “Si” campaign to ratify the accord and was expected to return to her post following the referendum last Sunday. But with the agreement being rejected by the — slim — majority of Colombians, the Bogotá-born official instead opted to step down.

Parody’s departure marks the second major figure in the peace process to hand in their resignation since the failed plebiscite. Humberto De la Calle, who served as the top negotiator for President Juan Manuel Santos in Cuba, also said the he would step down. The president rejected his offer, however, and has planned to keep De la Calle on board to help get a second round of talks going with the guerrilla rebels of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

In addition to her disappointment over the outcome of the “Si” campaign, the 42-year-old Parody has faced scorn throughout the year related to her private life. “The former minister had been in the eye of the hurricane in the months before the referendum after ultra-conservative Christians accused her of seeking the ‘gay colonization’ of Colombia’s youth when issuing a teacher’s manual on how to deal with gender-related bullying,” reported Adriaan Alsema of the Medellín-based news outlet Colombia Reports.

He continued: “The same group of ultra-conservatives used her sexual orientation to discredit the FARC deal. The peace agreement Parody was promoting sought gender-specific care for victims of sexual violence, but somehow ended up being explained to concerned Christians as a ‘gender ideology’ that sought to promote sexual diversity.”

Parody became education minister in August 2014 after working in a lower-level education position and previously served as a senator in the national congress from 2006 to 2009. She was one of the few ministers to survive a cabinet overhaul by President Santos in April. Finance Minister Mauricio Cárdenas, Defense Minister Luis Carlos, and Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin were among the others who retained their posts.