Education to empower girls and women

Julissa age 35 and with two children was unemployed and with no source of income when she entered the program. She is passionate about cooking and dreamed of starting her own bussiness using platains which are commonly grown in the Choco region she comes from. She had an initial idea of selling traditional ¨patacones¨ with meat. While she was taking courses on creative cooking and inspiration, she not only learned how to prepare unknown products for her such as eggplant, but further developed her creativity such that she came up with unique fillings for the platains. Additionally, she was very concerned with the situation of other women as herself who were unemployed. As part of the Design Thinking course she took in the program, she developed a prototype of a social venture geared towards solving this social issue by selling  fried platains with unique fillings.

Asides from Julissa´s story we have successfully empowered women like Maria a Venezuelan single inmigrant mon who was unemployed and devasted and who has managed to not only secure a job but become an empowered women who is working on her dream of starting her own pastry shop.

Women have finalized the Inspiration Phase of the program becoming equipped with empowerement, design thinking and personal development skills that have inspired them to launch prototypes of products or services in the food industry. Currently they are gaining tecniques in cooking and pastry, as well as leadership development skills. Soon our students will start to incorporate these skills into their prototypes.