Media: Mamás reales blog
Published: 7 de Febrero de 2019
By: Carolina Anastasiadis
Cecilia De la Paz is the mother of Juan Martín (9), Julieta (6) and Santiago (7 months). I came to her on twitter; her comments are very much in line with the philosophy of Real Moms, but also her phrases always resonate to me personally. So I decided to contact her and get to know the soul behind e.dúcate Uruguay, an organization that she founded and has been carrying out since 2009. With the philosophy that “one step is already on the way”, through this NGO she was touching the lives of thousands of Uruguayan children from all over the country and proved that education can transform and contribute to the children’s life possibilities, whatever their origin or vital circumstance.
She is a teacher by profession and has a masters in Communication and Electronic Media. In addition to directing e.dúcate Uy, she works at Global Partnership New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, a project that brings together eight countries (New Zealand, Finland, Australia, United States, Canada, Holland, Hong Kong and Uruguay) in order to develop best practices and educational conditions to promote the integral growth of children around the world. Cecilia is a real example that from the place we are, we can all collaborate with a grain of sand – and much more – to materialize change.
How does e.dúcate Uy originates?
I founded e.dúcate in 2009. I had been linked to NGO’s while living in Ecuador, and I had even founded an organization for the creation of a ‘model school’ in the jungle of that country. That was my first entrepreneurial experience in social issues. We created a multipurpose classroom with Canadian funds, a computer room, an audiovisual library with educational software, and a Discovery Channel project that I was already familiar with. We carryied out continuous training for all teachers in the school. We installed the ‘milk cup’ or school breakfast because the children arrived without eating. The results were amazing and I realized the ability each one has to change a reality. When I arrived in Uruguay, I did not think that the educational needs were so great, but I saw many children in the rural schools who were obviously under worse educational conditions. I decided to see how I could contribute my grain of sand. The challenge looked so great that we stick to the motto “one step is already the way” to take one challenge at a time.