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.
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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”.
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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
