 episode of Latin American Directions. My name is Nicolas Sussman, and today we have two star guests, Maria Jose Melina and Francisco Torres, to speak about an exciting and very interesting topic of social entrepreneurship and their very interesting project, Lucha. Maria Jose Francisco, welcome to Latin American Directions. It's a pleasure to have you here with us. Thank you very much for having us. We're really excited to be here. Great. So let's get started. Social entrepreneurship, right? It's a good concept. It sounds interesting. But it really doesn't tell what it entails, right? So I don't know, Maria Jose, could you tell us what social entrepreneurship is? Of course. Well, how we understand it, I think it's a pretty broad concept, but how Francisco and I and a lot of people that we've been talking with here in Latin America, we understand it as this concept of people just putting all their efforts into a type of business model or entrepreneurship in that sense, with a social cause. So basically what we do is kind of, you know, organize a whole enterprise or organization that works for us, but also has a social cause behind. And that's its main motor. We don't make money off of our causes. Let's say that the results that we seek are our earnings at the end of the day. So that's how I would define it, basically. Right. And then how would we differentiate this from concepts such as charities, nonprofit work, and so on? What's the key about entrepreneurship? Social entrepreneurship, Francisco? I would say that the key difference between, you know, lucha as a social entrepreneurship project with, you know, charity instances is that in social entrepreneurship, we see everyone as equal, you know, within charity, there's this, you know, hierarchy where there's someone who has more power, who is in a position of, you know, having control over another individual and within social entrepreneurship. What we want to do is create a positive social instance that is based on the understanding that we are all equal and there's no one who needs our help in, you know, this colonial and paternalistic way of, you know, analyzing charity. Right. Right. That's really interesting. So basically, it gives a whole turn to the social component of, I don't know if this is the right way to call it, but about helping people instead of helping keep people, I would say it's about empowering people, right? I'm working together and put efforts together, which I think is really interesting. Now, let's talk a bit about lucha. What is lucha, Maria Jose? Well, sorry. I would define lucha as a project that seeks to provide a service to young girls in Colombia, especially in lucha, a very vulnerable community that it has been touched a lot by violence and poverty throughout many years. And we seek to provide services of education for preparation for state exams and basically school admission exams for girls that are in their final age of high school education so that they can enter these institutions without any issues and actually achieve a sustainable future in education. Right. Well, that's really great. But I also know that lucha has a bit of history behind. So Francisco, can you tell us a bit about that history? I know you were very involved with the idea and then, I don't know, Maho jumped on it and you built something really great together. So could you tell us about the origin of lucha, the backstory? How you thought this is the thing they want to do? This is the communities they think we need to empower? So lucha, burn, you know, it starts to exist from an already existing NGO that is called Niñas en Miedo. Niñas en Miedo works in la Comuna Cuatro of Swacha, which Swacha is one of Colombia's biggest slums. It is, you know, a part of our geography that has a lot of social issues. It has cycles of poverty. And one of the main issues that concerned this NGO Niñas en Miedo is that la Comuna Cuatro of Swacha has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy. So they wanted to address this issue by empowering girls through sexual education programs and teaching them how to ride their bikes as a way of empowering them and teaching them that they can buy their own ways, you know, reach anywhere they want in life. And I've been a volunteer of Niñas en Miedo for over two years. One of my older sisters, she took me to Niñas en Miedo when I was still in high school. So for a very long time, I have created this strong emotional connections with members of the community, and have come to realize something that should have been very clear to me a long time ago, and is how systematic our social issues are, you know, poverty is not a choice. And these cycles of poverty need to be addressed in a way that empowers the community and makes them know that we coexist in a system that is unfair. And, you know, poverty is in not a way, in any way, their fault. And lucha, it was born from a conversation I had with one of these girls. And I came to realize, you know, how privileged I was as entering university from someone who is privileged in Bogota, Colombia's capital city is pretty easy. But for these girls, and in Swacha, it is, you know, a miracle to get into a university because of the systematic discrimination they suffer, you know, because of class, gender, and also in some cases race. So lucha is a way by which we wanted to give the privilege that we as, you know, privileged people from Bogota had, give them to these girls in Swacha, which is the preparation to excel in the exams that assure you to, you know, enter the university of your choice. Right. But and why did he choose to focus on that aspect, right? You were speaking about menacing me, just for audience, it's the translation of girls without fear. They decided to go for the riding bikes approach, right, as a sign of empowerment. And that was their thing, right? And if you can tell us a bit about that one, as you were also part of that and understand the correlation about something that seems that simple as riding a bike and well, significant and impactful issues such as being pregnant see that, as you said, say contributes to inequality contributes to marginalization and then if that model had something to do with the focus you chose for lucha, right? Because you chose one specific aspect of the many aspects involved, right? So I would like to know one, the logic perhaps behind the bike example in menacing me and then if this was a reference for you and why you chose to go for education and admission into university specifically the the standardized test which for reference is similar to the SAT for some degree in the US. So yeah, if you choose whoever wants to tell us about that or you take turns that that is fine. It's just very interesting the story behind all this, right? Yeah, Francis, if you want, you can start telling about the bikes, I feel like that's more of your expertise and then we'll talk about the exams and how that correlates. Okay. So actually, I'm a volunteer in Nines and we have two big groups of volunteering. There's the bicycle group, and there's the education group. And you know, I think it's kind of funny, but I am a volunteer at the bicycle, at the bicycle part of the NGO. And we are called VC Mentores, which is kind of like bike tutors. And I feel that, you know, the reasons why Nines and you have such an important emphasis on bicycles is because of the of the message it has regarding how when we teach a young girl how to ride their bike, we are not just teaching her, you know, a new way of transportation, we're teaching her that by her own means, she can get anywhere she wants in life, you know, knowing how to ride a bike means a girl can go anywhere she wants to, by herself. And that from Nines in Nero, we believe, well, within the institution, it is believed that that is synonym of empowering. And we worked with girls last Saturday, I was in the group of little girls, and we have girls from seven to 12 years old. And this Saturday, we will be working with girls from 13 to 17 years old. And I feel that this is an already proven methodology. I know that Nines Nero follows the example of already existing NGOs in the Dominican Republic and the US. And we know that bicycles are a way to empower young women, but also bicycles, I believe are crucial within this organization. Because they are a way to make sure that the girls stay within this organization. So a weekend, we have bicycles. And the next weekend, we have the education programs where, you know, teachers discuss with girls a broad range of topics from menstruation to consent, which are really important, but a way that we assure that girls stay in the organization if we have the bike program, you know, because they like it, they have fun with their friends. So they stay in the organization. And that's a way that we can assure that, you know, those girls can, you know, have information about, you know, important topics, such as, you know, sexual education. And I feel that it is really connected to lucha, because as the bike, we want to teach girls that they can reach anywhere they want in their lives. We feel that education is kind of like a bicycle. A girl can get whatever she can get anywhere she wants in life with a bike geographically, but with education, she can also do that, but in a way more, you know, transcendental and higher scale aspect. Right. Right. And now let's speak about this, this standardized test, the state tests, and why they're an obstacle, right? Because I think that's not just the problem of the Colombian system, but I would say of many systems, right? These exams for many people from a privileged background, I'm speaking now about the Colombian case are seen as the exams to some degree, you can get high scores without much effort, there's not a lot of preparation and going. And as you start moving from very privileged schools to less privileged schools to marginalized and public schools, well, you start seeing that the tests becomes a challenge, right? So I would like to know your experience on that. Why did you decide to focus on that? And I don't know that choose other issues of education that you could have to also support this community. So Maria, who said if you can tell us about it, please? Yeah, of course. So when we started thinking about Lucha and what we wanted to do, we wanted, we knew that we wanted to do something that was very simple, but that was very on target to the problem. So we started talking and this conversation that came up with between Francisco and Mariana, which is our inspiration, basically. We also realized that many of these girls, no matter what they do, no matter how many initiatives are involved in, how many NGOs are helping them, they still don't have the preparation to take these sort of exams. And as we know, many of us who have taken either SATs or exams in Colombia or the equivalent in any other country know that the main thing you need to know is how to take the exam, even more than the contents of it. It's more about how to answer and how to know how to read the questions. So we know that many of these girls don't have the access to preparation for these exams because the access that public schools give is not even half as good as the one that a kid could reach in a private institution. So we wanted to kind of erase that gap between kids in private schools and in public schools and give them a proper service that is funded, that is completely free for them, and that is actually given by people who know how to take this test and know how to work the system, let's say, and actually get them into school. So we thought it was a barrier that many educational institutions in Colombia overlook, but it's actually a really big issue. And it makes a lot of sense to actually work that specific exam and then see the results in a very short term of time. Right. Right. And just as a follow up question, have you already seen a difference of what you've done through Lucha or do we remain to see the results as I know that you're a rather new organization, right? Yeah, we're going to start with our pilot program just this semester. We're actually still in preparation. We have currently our group of volunteers and we're still in the whole, let's say, institutional process of funding a social venture project. So we have to get all our papers in check and work some tax issues with our funders up in New York. But yeah, we're still in process of beginning this semester. It's going to be our pilot program. So we're planning to have results by next semester. Fortunately, for us, I'm a government student. So I basically focus on studying if these programs work or not. And we've been deciding a way of kind of seeing if there's a way for us to make a impact, a study and see if these actually have results in the short term. Right. So and as part of this preparation, Francisco, I would like to know if you have already engaged with with the groups you're going to work on, you already told them that this is coming and what's their expectation, their reaction, how is that part of the people preparation side, not just the admin side? Something that I feel we are absolutely proud about Lucha is that Lucha is not a creation that comes uniquely from privileged students because that is what we are. That's what we in Maho are. We can visit this community. But at the end of the day, we are never going to truly and fully understand the life situation of the people in the community of Swacha. And that's why we believe it is so fundamental and so crucial to actively involve the community within, you know, every process that takes place within Lucha. So I've found a really great support within one of the leaders of this community. Her name is Luz and Luz, she helps in Minas y Miel and she is someone that I absolutely admire and from the community. She is someone that throughout the years I've come to form a special relationship with and she is a mother. She actually is the mother of Mariana, one of the girls of Minas y Miel and she has helped us, you know, to tell the community to tell other moms about this opportunity of having a free preparation for the state exams. And now we have 12 girls already signed up to be part of, you know, this project. And in fact, the 24th of September, we're going to have our first Lucha session where what we want to do is present the girls with our teachers, the volunteers and, you know, have this space where girls can tell us what they expect, you know, what they want out of Lucha, because we don't want to, you know, create this social entrepreneurship idea as something that has a hierarchy as something that we impose to the community. We want something, we want Lucha to be a space where girls actively participate and, you know, create among with us something that can beneficiate the community. Right. Right. Well, that's that's amazing. Now let's speak about your journey of success, right? And let's speak about the resolution project support of that. So for our audience, Francisco and Maria Jose met in the model unit, model United Nations team at the New York City Los Angeles that competes in the Harvard National Model United Nations, which is, I would say, the biggest, if not one of the biggest conferences of model United Nations worldwide. But they decided not only to go and do the competition, simulating that they were delegates from different countries, but they decided to put their energy, their preparation and their effort into creating social venture projects that is funded by, I believe this is a non-profit, a philanthropist organization called the Resolution Project. And they won, actually, they won. So I just want to give you this space. Maria Jose and Francisco, tell us about your experience, what the Resolution Project is and how you came with this idea to you decided to participate and while you decided to to start with Lucha as your Resolution Project. Yeah, of course. Well, first, I would like to say that it started all very fast. It was kind of very, very quickly how we came up with Lucha and how we decided to take the leap into participating into such a big, I don't know, challenge for both of us, because neither of us have had the experience of, you know, starting a social venture before or even funding our own organization or enterprise. So I actually met Francisco last year. We've been friends now for over a year and we're really close. And I met him because I was actually coordinating the team that was going to participate in Harvard UN. I was going to be the leader of the team and kind of training them throughout the entire year. And then Francisco and I got to talking. We got really close and we got to know each other and see what we were interested in. We're both interested in topics really related to social ventures and topology, government, seeing how we can improve our communities and the problems that we have here in our country, especially in our city. So we got to talking and I presented him with this opportunity with for the Resolution Project. And they asked him if he knew of any issues that he wanted to solve and that I could help him with. And he said, of course, I'm actually working with Nia Simeo. I met Mariana. This is what's going on here. We need to help these girls and it's actually not very hard if you really think about it. So we decided to take on the challenge and then in a matter of weeks, we put it we put it together. We talked to everyone and we managed to win in the social venture challenge. That's how they call it at the Resolution Project. We had over, I don't know, Francisco, like over 20 participants of different ventures. And we won. We were one of the many winners of that day and we got the grant, which is more than $4,000 in money for us to start our venture. So it was a really great opportunity. We got a lot of visibility and also, you know, it was a great way to start the venture. Not a lot of NGOs or social ventures can say that they started with this amount of money to begin with. So we're really great for the opportunity and it was actually really fun. It was in a matter of days. The competition was really hard. We had a lot of sleepless nights, but we did it and we're really happy to like have done it because now we're here and we're actually gonna see how this impacts the lives of girls, which is what really matters to us. Right, and I think now I'm gonna ask perhaps the hardest question of a show and it's what do you think made you win? What was the key to your success? And I would say what's the key to the success of Glucha, right? Why they chose you over other projects and then why should other investors choose you over other ventures? Or at least just see the value in yours, right? Yeah. I feel that something that really differentiated us from other ventures is that we constructed a program along the community. I feel that that's something that sounds so easy, but it's so hard to have the confidence, the trust from a vulnerable community, to have this real connections that are just emotional and that is a plus that makes sure that a venture will last through time. And also a point that I believe was crucial to our success is that we built Glucha not only with the community, but also we had a really strong interest on incorporating academic conclusions within our project. We investigated a lot, especially on studies published by the National University of Columbia regarding how those access to higher education in Columbia work. And there's this data analysis of this long period of time that came to the conclusion that in Columbia, access to university has a discrimination based on class, gender and race. It is absolutely more likely to access a university in Columbia if you have money, if you are a man, and if you are not a member of a racialized community. And you know, Swacha is a community, it's a slum that has been built upon the internal displacement of people and the Colombian armed conflict. So we have this community where you can find a lot of people who are racialized in Swacha. There's a high percentage of people who are Afro-Columbian citizens. And you know, we work with impoverished girls. So we have the subjects who have been recognized by academic studies as the most vulnerable individuals within our educational system. So you know, after starting this conclusions and having this personal connection with the community, we came with the idea of building Lucha as a way of having the community and building this project with them and also gathering the academic conclusions in order to build this program that wants, you know, to be a way by which we denormalize how unfair the system we exist in is. Right. So you think, well, I could take my hat to you because this is a serious and well-thought and a project that caused all of this. Maria Jose, we're in the last minute of our show and I would just like to give you the opportunity to speak to our audience, to speak to potential donors and to use this space to gather support for Lucha in supporting you. But I would like to give you the chance to do your elevator pitch, your fundraising pitch for audience out there because this is worth supporting as well as other Latin American social ventures, right? Solutions from Latin America to Latin America that have an impact. So yeah, the floor is yours for this last minute. Thank you. Yeah, so I just wanted to say, first of all, thank you for having us, we're really excited and thank you for giving us especially the opportunity to come forward and tell how important it is for girls to be educated, especially in Latin America. As everyone knows, for now we are a very new venture so we're starting a new crowdfunding for the funding for the next semester that are coming up and for many expenses that we're gonna have to cover. The link is gonna be in the description of the talk show so please, even if it's just a small donation, it's gonna help us a lot and it's gonna be reflected directly on the lives of these girls that are gonna be educated by us. And yeah, let's just keep on working and see what happens. And of course, follow us as well on social media. We're gonna be posting our first sessions, how the classes are going, you guys are gonna get to meet the girls and kind of see very closely how this process is gonna impact the community. And hopefully we can gain more and more traction and see how other ventures wanna join together and create a bigger impact here in Colombia and hopefully in Latin America. So yeah, that would be my final invitation. Get to know us, donate if you can, whatever you can and also try to support your local social ventures even if it's just around the corner. There's always someone trying to help the community. So just keep an eye out for that because it's really important for us and we're really happy to be here as well. Thank you very much for hosting us. Of course. Thank you, Francisco. Thank you, Maria Jose, to our audience. Thank you for your attention. Keep an eye out on this people because they're gonna make a difference and we'll see each other in two weeks. This was Latin American Directions. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.