As of 2022, nearly 37% of Colombia’s entire population is living below the country’s poverty line. This large impoverished population is here due to multiple factors, including armed conflicts and displacements, especially within the country’s rural areas. However, there are ways to help these families, with one major way being to support the development of better education within the country. Helping with education is an important step for many families to get out of poverty, and helping prevent further poverty within families that have not been affected yet. Here are a few organizations that help strengthen education in Colombia.

Fundación Pies Descalzos

Founded in 1997 by famous pop-singer and songwriter Shakira, Fundación Pies Descalzos (Barefoot Foundation in English) helps broaden access to education in Colombia. This includes training teachers, providing benefits to families in need, and building more schools. According to its website, it has helped more than 224,000 children all over the country. They also have worked with multiple other organizations during the years, including USAID, the Colombian Department of Education and Nestle. Recently, it also gave humanitarian aid to families affected by armed conflict within the country.

Education Cannot Wait

Founded in 2015 by Gordon Brown, Education Cannot Wait works to help refugee families provide better access to education for their children. Due to the large number of Venezuelan refugees in Colombia, this makes a significant portion of the poverty population that needs better access to education in Colombia. It also helps local Colombian children who were internally displaced due to armed conflict as part of its programs to provide better educational resources. So far, it has built 215 schools around the country and trained over 5,000 teachers as of 2024.

Social Finance UK

An organization based in the United Kingdom and founded in 2007, Social Finance offers numerous humanitarian aid benefits both within and outside its country’s borders. In Colombia, it mainly focuses on children of displaced families and children living in rural areas, as those are the ones who suffer the most difficulties in maintaining an education and are most affected by poverty in Colombia.

Its current program for Colombia, Outcomes Fund for Education Results (OFFERS), focuses on taking data from different projects and sharing their findings with the Colombian education system to help them make informed decisions on improving policy and finding methods to give the impoverished better access to education. OFFERS is also funded by Global Affairs Canada, which is a governmental organization of the Canadian government.

Powerful Children Colombia

Founded in 2021 as a response to the number of families that fell into poverty during the global pandemic, Powerful Children Colombia focuses on empowering children in Colombia who are currently suffering from poverty. It does this by creating partnerships with other organizations that help Colombian children with educational and developmental opportunities, in hopes of giving them better avenues to escape the cycle of poverty. Its two current programs focus on helping children in rural areas to help them promote physical education.

Education in Colombia

Colombia could take a long time to fully heal from the problems it has, but with better education, poverty could greatly improve, leading to higher standards of living. These are also only a few of the organizations helping give better access to education in Colombia, and they are always willing to receive support from people all over the world.

– Jose Gabriel Lopez

Jose is based in London, UK and focuses on Good News and Technology for The Borgen Project.

Photo: Flickr