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LIDERA was born from a deep conviction: in Colombia, where a child is born still determines their opportunities and access to quality education. Social and educational gaps persist, especially in marginalized territories, where the lack of teachers in key areas and the absence of professional role models limit the potential of millions of students.
Inspired by Teach For All, we identified the need to attract professionals who bring knowledge, leadership, and collective work into the education system. The program prepares these professionals to join schools as teachers in vulnerable areas, generating a direct impact on learning and life projects.
For 2 years, Ecos teach, build deep relationships with students and communities, and develop skills to lead both individually and collectively. This experience, together with rigorous training, enables them to understand the system’s challenges firsthand and prepare to influence change from different sectors. We have promoted practices in peace education, climate education, DEI-focused leadership, and gender-responsive education, responding to the country’s current challenges.
We believe sustainable transformations are driven by prepared, empathetic, and connected leaders, ensuring that more students have high-quality teachers and consolidating a movement committed to building a country where context does not determine any student’s future.
LIDERA has a training curriculum that develops pedagogical and collective leadership skills so professionals can ensure holistic learning and foster leadership from the classroom. This curriculum addresses competencies in curriculum and planning, classroom management, assessment, and learning and development. It also strengthens individual, relational, and collective leadership, promoting a learning mindset, joint work with the educational community, and a systemic perspective.
The training has included modules on peace education, climate education, gender-responsive financial education, and leadership focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. It seeks to model what we expect to happen in classrooms: meaningful learning through active methodologies, socioemotional strengthening, projects born from each community’s needs and dreams, and connections among schools, families, and local stakeholders; supported by ongoing feedback, pedagogical coaching, and intentional work.
This innovation draws on the work of the global Teach For All network, adapted to the Colombian context for more than 13 years. While it draws on references such as the Teaching as Collective Leadership framework, its commitment to socioemotional skills, STEM, and English as a second language responds to the country’s educational realities. Relevant links: https://gobierno.uniandes.edu.co/teach-for-all/ and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4871562
Over the past two years, LIDERA has expanded to new territories in the Caribbean, Pacific, and Andean regions, strengthening partnerships and reaching more communities. We have consolidated a network of more than 480 Alumni: 86% continue expanding opportunities through schools, NGOs, and social projects; 46% are teachers, 22% work in NGOs, 6% are school leaders, and 25 Alumni hold influence roles in organizations such as UNICEF, the Bogotá Secretariat of Education, and FExE. More than 75% feel they are active members of the movement, and more than 90% live in Colombia, committed to continuing to multiply their impact.
In the coming years, we seek to grow steadily, reach more territories, and develop an increasing number of exceptional leaders, strengthening the support and mentoring models that sustain the program’s impact.
Over its 13 years of work in Colombia, LIDERA has been in constant evolution. Each year, based on lessons from the previous year, adjustments are made to recruitment, selection, training, and support processes so they respond to the needs of the Colombian context and our commitment to quality education and the development of collective leadership, with a focus on systemic transformation.
In recent years, we simplified our training and support approach around the development of two key types of competencies: pedagogical competencies and leadership competencies. We also strengthened our commitment to developing socioemotional skills, so they serve as an enabler for learning and allow the progressive development of collective leadership from the classroom. Finally, we consolidated our learning and leadership catalysts as innovative pedagogical initiatives using active methodologies, designed with expert partners and providing our participants with tools to develop meaningful, cross-cutting learning. We have thus advanced and strengthened our work in career guidance, climate education, gender-responsive financial education, comprehensive sexuality education, and peace education. In several of these processes, we have collaborated with Alumni, demonstrating how LIDERA’s medium- and long-term perspective generates a virtuous cycle.
Although this network is made up of independent organizations, being part of it guides us toward common purposes, offers us unifying principles, and provides multiple tools to contextualize our work, based on the premise of being locally rooted and globally informed. Network learning offers multiple advantages by allowing us to build on the strengths and opportunities of other partners that have faced similar challenges in their contexts.
