The entrepreneurship that helps women overcome problems in Chocó - Other Cities - Colombia

Taking young women out of the armed conflict in the Pacific region is not an easy task. This is an area of ​​the country where opportunities for study and personal development for young people are scarce and where talent is exploited by illegal actors.

For this reason, the work of Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno in the city of Quibdó makes her efforts to build peace even more meritorious, because despite so much difficulty has managed to build a path to overcome obstacles not only for her, but for a group of girls and adolescents from her region.

(Enter the special: United Colombia, where differences can live)

For her, the construction of peace must go from speeches to deeds in order for it to become a reality. They are perhaps her great optimism and, as she herself says “her perrenque of her” of her, what has led her to empower herself and seek a better future for “her girls of her” of her.

With her wide smile, she has managed to conquer many community goals of which she is proud and her pupils even more so.

Why robotics?

This young woman, who is about to finish her law degree, approached the recently created Robotics School in her city, Quibdó, three years ago. She there she realized that girls’ participation was minimal and, in the cases in which it did occur, it was not prolonged and did not meet goals.

When she inquired about the reasons, she learned that something more worrying was added to the stigma of women against science and technology: the high rates of violence that took place against young people in the region.

With her project she seeks to end the stigma that girls and women should not do science.

Photo:

Courtesy Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno

“I trust in my territory and in its women, in the power of the Pacific, the potential of the Chocoanas, their brawl that allows them to overcome difficulties. Women with empowerment through science, technology, resorting to conflict resolution and overcoming difficulties in other ways from the development of skills and abilities in women”.

(You may be interested: ‘Unpaid professional practices are a form of exploitation’).

And that’s when he decided to rely on the skills he got from robotics school and make it a tool to help.

“The department of Chocó has many territorial, social, cultural and historical stigmas and it has been very difficult to face that society that places limits and geographical, social and economic barriers. I never imagined that robotics school would provide those tools, but I didn’t think either. go further and reach the point of transforming my territory from science and technology”, recognized Cruz Helena.

Teaching science and technology and getting inspirational to target girls was a great building lesson in the region.

During school: one of the groups of girls who went through their Robotics School program.

Photo:

Courtesy Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno

“The robotics program made it possible to defeat that stigma that women are not good for science and technology. Gender stigmas that limited their intellectual and economic capacities”.

There are already 300 women who have approached innovation and, with science and technology, have created solutions to overcome problems in their communities throughout the Pacific.

There are already 300 women who have approached innovation and, with science and technology, have created solutions to overcome problems in their communities

“In each version of Innovation Girl it has been confirmed that women are the future of Colombia, but they also inspire a new generation of women in the territory and that is my purpose in life. I feel very proud of that. My role has been the empowerment of womenr in science and technology”, highlights Helena.

Inspire

For this reason, she is certain that programs like Innovation Girl will last for a long time and is sure that it will transcend Chocó, which is where it takes place in each edition.

This laboratory of entrepreneurship through science and technology will surely reach the entire country and Latin America.

For now, he will go, in addition to his department, to Cauca and Nariño. The only obstacle is overcoming the stigmas women facepeople of color and the inhabitants of the abandoned territories.

(Further: ‘I hope to see a revolution of Islam led by women.’)

“The gender issue has a very great historical burden. The fight has been hard to have territorial and cultural rights. Therefore, science and technology will make it possible to close these social gaps. With this we bet on obtaining opportunities and building peace”, says Cruz Helena with certainty, for whom spaces like Innovation Girl can lead to landing opportunities for women entrepreneurs who are just looking for an opportunity, for someone to listen to them.

Cruz Helena highlights the name of the country in all its international participations.

Photo:

Courtesy Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno

“For every 10 ventures there are 7 led by women and I have a lot of faith in the push of them for whom nothing has been great. Many people who bet on their power make me think that a more equitable country is closer.”

That is why, with her convincing smile, she insists on that message to the girls and young women of the country. Whenever she can, she gives words of motivation: “There is nothing that is too big for us, nothing that cannot be fulfilled. Dreams are to be fulfilled science and technology will help make life much easier and close the social problems in our territories. There will always be a space for us in science and technology”.

(Keep reading: UN Women: ‘We have to keep raising the flag of parity.’)

Entrepreneurship Laboratory

Innovation Girls 5.0 is an Entrepreneurship Laboratory that seeks to enhance the technology skills and entrepreneurial spirit of the participants in the areas of tourism, technology, transformation and use of natural resources.

In addition, the program seeks to promote the development of solutions to the problems of local environments and the ability to generate their own income for those who participate.

This, within the framework of an alternative for the economic empowerment of women in the Pacific.

exemplary woman

There are many expectations that this young leader has at this time, who seeks to continue working for the communities of Chocó. In the last year she graduated as a lawyer and continues to inspire young people of African descent through talks throughout the country in which she asks them to take advantage of their surroundings to transform their lives, those of their friends and neighbors, as well as achieve new opportunities. .

(You may be interested in: 4 Colombian scientists recognized in 3M’s ’25 women in science’).

She was the Afro-Colombian of the Year in the youth category in 2021, one of the few Colombians to win the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program and, recently, was chosen as the Cafam Chocó Woman, something that has high expectations for her, since she would see it as recognition of the work of young women in her region.

The young leader won the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program in 2021.

Photo:

Courtesy Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno

creation labs

-16-year-old women from the Pacific have enrolled in the program to strengthen their entrepreneurship.

-The laboratory helps them transform their plan into a business, train themselves and take their ideas to the next level.

-So far, more than 300 girls and young people have created science and technology solutions for their territories.

(Also: Great Ideas of Mathematics: communication made numbers).

-Kelly Córdoba and Yorleidy Parra are the girls from the program who participated in the workshop experience at NASA in August.

HELP MARIA MARTINEZ
DNA Bogota
United Colombia

United Colombia: stories of people who have overcome difficulties | AMI - Colombia

Every link is a portrait or a mirror and life grows when it communicates. We come together to create. There is a collective conscience that disposes us to talk, to listen, to reach agreements. It is invented since the beginning of time. Differences are reconciled when there is group action, when the path is the union of talents and efforts around the common interest. History provides countless moments and nation processes that began with everyone’s trust. In the union of generations around a consensus. Every anthology is personal, but social life takes place between communicated beings that vibrate.

The nut of that coming and going of the country with its desires, joys and crossroads, is being recorded in the stories told by newspapers and magazines, broadcast on the radio, or enter the chapter of memories of unforgettable images on television or current formats of the digital world. The good, the bad and the ugly of a diverse and critical nation that is always on display. The media have been there to say so. It is part of everyday life that is kept in the closet of memories, and the duty of those who had the privilege of telling it. The chroniclers of yesterday and today who are weaving the pieces of the puzzle. The breviary of the news that is amplified.

This is a challenging time. An hour of decisions. The pandemic continues to gravitate as a random and uncertain enemy. Economies continue to suffer, needs grow, interest groups diversify, violence reappears. There are enough reasons to join the defense of a right, or of all, accompanied by the conviction of believing and trusting in free and responsible communication as an authentic value. Technology changed the world, but fake news and bias also lurk with their echo chambers. In contrast, there are examples of collaboration, fair competition, fair play or union around the fire of higher interests, which deserve to be known or recounted.

Life is made up of opposites that manage to transfer dissent; of productive coexistence between differences and affinities. Communicating to unite and uniting in communication Like an encircling thread facing the country and its democratic challenges, it is an invitation to delve into this special created to understand and verify that, among Colombians, there is much more that unites us than what separates us. It is also supported by the brands that accompany us and share their space and their messages. It is also the occasion to vindicate the sixty years of the Colombian Information Media Association (AMI), an organization that believes in Colombia and that, through the journalism of its members, has shown its lights and its darkness.

Colombia Unida, where differences can live, is also a recognition of the inspiring principle that today moves the country’s newsrooms that have been reconstituted after the pandemic: collective creation. It is in the debate in the editorial boards, in the corridors of the media or in the back rooms of journalism, where the stories that summarize us as a country germinate. Those that are delivered here constitute an inciting inventory to read, hear or see, thinking that social union is possible as a reunion compass against indecision. Those of a society that, by uniting, can face the ups and downs of history with common firmness.

Thus, all the member media of the Colombian Association of Information Media (AMI) join in this special editorial, to contribute to this purpose, working together, sharing content and agreeing that with what we manage to do together we multiply and contribute more.

Alhurra Brings People Together to Overcome Stereotypes – USAGM

Alhurra Brings People Together to Overcome Stereotypes

December 27, 2021

Springfield, VA— Alhurra Television’s latest program looks to teardown stereotypes regarding women. Each week Together will feature one woman based in the Middle East/North Africa region or the U.S., who has made extraordinary achievements in her life. Whether working in a male-dominated industry or being at the top of her field. Together will focus on how she got there and the people that supported her during her journey.

“This program celebrates and empowers women and their successes. Together gives us an opportunity to hear directly from them about the challenges and triumphs in their careers, as well as acknowledging that no one can do it alone. The program demonstrates how society, family, education and culture can be catalysts for progress and prosperity,” stated MBN Acting President Hassan Shwiki. MBN manages and oversees Alhurra Television. “Together will defy the pigeonholes that women in the region are often placed.”

Beyond telling their stories, the women profiled in Together will also discuss the role of government and society in shaping how women are perceived and explore how they mentor other young men and women. Profiles will include the first female Lebanese Minister of Interior and Municipalities Raya Al-Hassan, Egyptian ship captain Marwa El Selehdar and the Speaker of the Kurdish Parliament Dr. Rawaz Faeq Hussein. The weekly program will air Thursday evenings at 20:30 GMT.

About MBN

The Middle East Broadcasting Networks is a non-profit corporation is financed by the U.S. Government through a grant from USAGM. MBN operates Alhurra Television, an Arabic-language television network that broadcasts to 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa via satellite, as well as Alhurra-Iraq Television. MBN also operates Okay, radio and its two dedicated streams, one to Iraq and the other to the Levant. It is available via FM throughout these two areas and provides more than 15 hours of news and information daily on each stream.