When the floods of February and March 2026 struck 25 of Córdoba’s 30 municipalities, more than 200,000 people lost almost everything: their crops, their livestock, and their means of supporting their families. My name is Lina Tami-Barrera, and together with the University of Córdoba, I designed a certificate program so that these communities can not only recover but also return to farming with stronger tools than before.
Imagine being a teacher and having 25 students between the ages of 4 and 12 in the same classroom. While you’re teaching one student how to hold a pencil, you have to explain fractions to another; you don’t have up-to-date materials, and no one is there to help you. This is the reality faced every day by more than 22,000 rural teachers in Colombia’s most remote schools.
In Popayán, youth unemployment hovers around 12 percent, and the informal sector accounts for more than 56 percent of the workforce. Many young people at the INEM Francisco José de Caldas High School finish high school wondering if their only path is to look for a job that may never come along. I believe there is another path: to train them not to look for work, but to create solutions.
Colombia has endured more than 60 years of armed conflict, but it is only recently that the education system has begun to address this issue more directly through programs and curriculum reforms. Although the Truth Commission has contributed to this process, little is known about how rural schools affected by the conflict—such as those in the Serranía del Perijá—have engaged with this legacy.
Being the first in your family to go to college should feel like an accomplishment, not like being lost in a place where no one explained to you how things work. That feeling is one of the most overlooked reasons why so many first-generation students drop out during their first year.
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