PODEROSAS started when I was a Teach for Colombia fellow teaching in a low-income community. I recognized my female students frequently missed due to menstruation, there was expected and accepted child and teen pregnancies (between 15 to 20 cases per year) and normalized sexual and gender-based violence; no one talked about this. So, as a personal initiative, I invited my students to an extracurricular space to talk about sexuality, rights, violence and revealed a deep ignorance permeated by taboo and myths. The curriculum and methodology were far from the traditional classroom education, and co-designed with my students, responding to their needs, interests, and inquiries. Within a year what started with 5 grew to 40+ participants, and the school`s pregnancy rate dropped from 18 to 4. Their overall participation and presence was significantly reinforced as well as their academic performance. These transforming results moved by word of mouth all over the country and I began to receive requests to replicate Poderosas in other communities by teachers, leaders and other organizations revealing the high need and demand for this type of spaces, but also the results and influence that our program has had on the communities and participants, generating a cascade effect.

Contact: msanzdesantamaria@poderosascolombia.org

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