By Natalia Anariba | Directora Ejecutiva
Dear friends,
Warm greetings from the entire educate. team!
We are pleased to share some experiences from our work at the Youth Center and with students from rural communities in Trinidad and the surrounding areas. Thanks to your support, we continue creating spaces where girls, boys, and young people discover their talents, shape their own learning, and develop life skills.
We currently support 45 students from rural communities in Trinidad, Chinda, and Ilama: 40 secondary school students and 5 university students. At educate., we believe that education goes beyond the classroom. It also means learning by doing, expressing ideas, working as a team, recognizing our strengths, and building the confidence to face new challenges.
EducArte: Telling Our Stories Through Art
Through EducArte, 20 young people participate every week in arts learning activities that foster creativity, motivation, and confidence in their abilities. They are currently creating three large-scale canvases inspired by the identity, landscapes, and traditions of their communities - one each representing the municipalities of Trinidad, Chinda, and Ilama - with the aim of sharing their work with these communities. They are also creating paintings that represent the customs and cultural richness of their municipalities.
Throughout this process, young people develop artistic skills, make decisions, exchange ideas, and discover new ways to express what they feel and value about their communities. In this way, art strengthens their identity, collaboration, and sense of belonging.
Emerson, an eighth-grade student, shares his experience: “For me, art is a way to express my feelings. It is the best way to develop my mind and my emotions. Those of us who draw find a way to bring out what we carry inside. Art is a tool that we should all learn about and try when words cannot express what we feel.”
Technology with Purpose: Learning by Doing
Our Technology with Purpose Level 1 program has this year supported more than 60 girls and boys in developing digital skills. Recently, classes on using Microsoft PowerPoint have involved practical exercises, learning to organize information, insert images, and create their own presentations.
Some participants needed more practice to master certain functions. This allowed them to progress at their own pace, work through challenges, and gain confidence using a computer. The group successfully completed their course, celebrating the knowledge and skills they had acquired.
Meanwhile, 45 students from secondary schools in Trinidad, coming from nearby coffee-growing communities, continued strengthening their skills in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on Saturdays. These learning experiences addressed their academic and professional needs, including the preparation of work-placement reports.
Both experiences reflect our commitment to practical, participatory education, where students develop independence, creativity, and useful skills for their studies and future employment opportunities.
Workshops to Strengthen Self-Esteem: Recognizing Our Potential
This month, we also created spaces for 42 young people to reflect on self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-motivation. Through participatory activities, they explored how fears and negative thoughts can limit their abilities, and how to approach new challenges from a constructive perspective.
By creating a personal compass, they identified their strengths, talents, sources of motivation, and short-term goals. These activities helped them reflect on their decisions, recognize their abilities, and begin to envision their own paths toward the future.
Each experience shows that girls, boys, and young people are not simply recipients of knowledge: they are active participants in their own learning, capable of creating, experimenting, reflecting, and developing solutions to the challenges they face.
Thanks to your support, we continue to foster spaces where art strengthens identity, technology opens up new possibilities, and personal development nurtures confidence and leadership. Thank you for walking this path with us!
With great gratitude,
Natalia Anariba
Executive Director
By Natalia Anariba | educate. Director
By Natalia Anariba | educate. Director
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