Unlocking Latin-American professional talent
Donation protected
"Have you ever wondered what might happen if we unleashed all the professional talent going untapped in Latin America? There is a way to find out: boost mentorship programmes.
The 2017 World Bank report Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean finds that of people aged 25–29 who have ever been enrolled in higher education in the region, only half have finished their degrees. It attributes dropout rates in part to a “lack of mentoring, tutoring, and counselling programs”. Although there are many excellent mentorship programmes in high-income countries, most are offered only to students already in those nations, and usually only in English.
In 2015, I founded Ekpa’palek, a non-profit whose name means ‘teaching a child to take their first steps’ in Shiwilu, an Indigenous Amazonian language. It offers free online mentorship in Spanish and Quechua — the primary Indigenous language of Peru — and we are in the process of adding other languages.
Interested students can go to our webpage (www.ekpapalek.com ) to find a suitable mentor: someone who works in their field, speaks their language, works in a country of interest or offers a particular set of skills. Currently, we host profiles of about 40 mentors (nearly all originally from Latin America), with expertise in the physical, biological and social sciences, life coaching and English writing. Mentors and mentees connect, sometimes once, sometimes for ongoing guidance.
Today (December 2018), Ekpa’palek’s blog is read in 116 countries, and the videos on our YouTube channel have been viewed more than 68,000 times in total. Some of our mentees are now studying or doing internships at top universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, among others.
The 174 students and young professionals who have so far participated have asked for help on tasks such as improving their CV, finding opportunities abroad, choosing a speciality, becoming internationally competitive and — inevitably — how to improve their English. We have had students who are eager to learn about careers not taught in some Latin American countries (Peru and Guatemala, for example, do not seem to offer any masters degrees in astrophysics). Some have sought advice on which countries are most welcoming to gay people, or how to deal with rape trauma. (Latin America is particularly prone to violence against women and people from sexual and gender minorities.) Mentoring programmes should be designed to help students not only with professional development, but also with their self-confidence, emotional intelligence and personal issues.
Virtual mentorship programmes such as Ekpa’palek can help to attenuate the brain drain that many Latin American countries face, by bringing back knowledge and connections, if not people. "
We need your support to unlock the vast talent and potential of Latin American students.!
(extracts from the article "Students need guidance in languages they speak" by our director Clarissa Rios Rojas at the scientific journal Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07674-6)
You can know more about our organization in the following links:
- At the most famous scientific journal Nature !
- At the news of World Pulse (USA) :
- At the news of Empower Women (UN Women)
- At the podcast #StandingOut (USA)
- At the magazine "Ananke"(Emirates)
- At the news of University of Queensland (Australia)
If you donate to our organization so we can keep working empowering and unleashing the full potential of developing countries!
Many thanks to our donors in 2018, thanks to you we could raise 63 euros which helped us to cover part of the costs of our website.
Thank you so much!
Ekpa'palek Team
- For a video in English about our organization please check here.
- Para un video en Español acerca de nuestra organizacion por favor seguir este link .
The 2017 World Bank report Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean finds that of people aged 25–29 who have ever been enrolled in higher education in the region, only half have finished their degrees. It attributes dropout rates in part to a “lack of mentoring, tutoring, and counselling programs”. Although there are many excellent mentorship programmes in high-income countries, most are offered only to students already in those nations, and usually only in English.
In 2015, I founded Ekpa’palek, a non-profit whose name means ‘teaching a child to take their first steps’ in Shiwilu, an Indigenous Amazonian language. It offers free online mentorship in Spanish and Quechua — the primary Indigenous language of Peru — and we are in the process of adding other languages.
Interested students can go to our webpage (www.ekpapalek.com ) to find a suitable mentor: someone who works in their field, speaks their language, works in a country of interest or offers a particular set of skills. Currently, we host profiles of about 40 mentors (nearly all originally from Latin America), with expertise in the physical, biological and social sciences, life coaching and English writing. Mentors and mentees connect, sometimes once, sometimes for ongoing guidance.
Today (December 2018), Ekpa’palek’s blog is read in 116 countries, and the videos on our YouTube channel have been viewed more than 68,000 times in total. Some of our mentees are now studying or doing internships at top universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, among others.
The 174 students and young professionals who have so far participated have asked for help on tasks such as improving their CV, finding opportunities abroad, choosing a speciality, becoming internationally competitive and — inevitably — how to improve their English. We have had students who are eager to learn about careers not taught in some Latin American countries (Peru and Guatemala, for example, do not seem to offer any masters degrees in astrophysics). Some have sought advice on which countries are most welcoming to gay people, or how to deal with rape trauma. (Latin America is particularly prone to violence against women and people from sexual and gender minorities.) Mentoring programmes should be designed to help students not only with professional development, but also with their self-confidence, emotional intelligence and personal issues.
Virtual mentorship programmes such as Ekpa’palek can help to attenuate the brain drain that many Latin American countries face, by bringing back knowledge and connections, if not people. "
We need your support to unlock the vast talent and potential of Latin American students.!
(extracts from the article "Students need guidance in languages they speak" by our director Clarissa Rios Rojas at the scientific journal Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07674-6)
You can know more about our organization in the following links:
- At the most famous scientific journal Nature !
- At the news of World Pulse (USA) :
- At the news of Empower Women (UN Women)
- At the podcast #StandingOut (USA)
- At the magazine "Ananke"(Emirates)
- At the news of University of Queensland (Australia)
If you donate to our organization so we can keep working empowering and unleashing the full potential of developing countries!
Many thanks to our donors in 2018, thanks to you we could raise 63 euros which helped us to cover part of the costs of our website.
Thank you so much!
Ekpa'palek Team
- For a video in English about our organization please check here.
- Para un video en Español acerca de nuestra organizacion por favor seguir este link .
Organizer
Cla Risa
Organizer
Geuzen- en Statenkwartier, NL
