Build Latin America's next generation of leaders!

Dear Supporters,

We are thrilled to share the remarkable progress and heartfelt update from our "Support 20 Young Leaders to Change LatAm's Future" project. Thanks to your generous support, we have empowered young leaders to make meaningful changes in their communities.

At the Latin American Leadership Academy (LALA) we are on a mission to unleash the potential of young leaders across Latin America. We aim to transform the region by developing ethical, transformational leaders equipped to tackle the region's most pressing social issues.

We’ve had great results since our beginnings back in 2017, and we are happy to share some of our most relevant numbers with you in retrospect:

To April 2023, we’ve had over 10,000 young leaders applying to join our community, from which more than 2,400 incredible young leaders were selected to participate in our leadership boot camps. These LALideres come from over 20 countries in Latin America and 70% come from an underrepresented background. We consider the following elements as underrepresented backgrounds: LGTBIQ+ community, rural communities, afro-descendants and Indigenous people, low-income communities, and first-generation attending college. 

Furthermore, we work hard to make sure that money is not a barrier to joining us, so we give scholarships to around 90% of our selected candidates on average. In 2023, 87% of the selected cohort received an average scholarship of 64% for their costs of attendance. As donors, you were a fundamental part of this!

In 2023 we also had 15 bootcamps: 2 in-person (in Medellin, Colombia) and 13 virtual. These were learning spaces where students met incredible young leaders from all over the continent, encountering a unique community full of people dreaming of making Latin America a better place for all. If you want to remember the magic of our boot camps, we invite you to check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34NQyd2fhSw 

The average Net Promoter Score (how much would participants recommend the program to other people) of these camps was +93, incredible results that showcase their high satisfaction with our boot camps. Furthermore, our LALideres reported significant improvements in self-confidence, leadership commitment, resilience, and self-awareness after attending their camps.

Besides our leadership boot camps, we continued offering our signature programs, which are part of our ecosystem of opportunities. Here are the results of some of them: 

University Placement Program

This is a program where we support low-income, high-achieving students to apply to their dream universities in the US. We also accompany them during the scholarship application process, understanding the difficulties this type of process may represent for students from vulnerable backgrounds. Here are some of the latest results: 

- Participants: 24 LALíderes took part in this program, from which 50% are first-generation attending university

- Scholarships Offered: Over $1.8 million in scholarships for freshman year

- 20 fully-funded scholarship offers, in colleges like Harvard, Stanford, NYU, University of Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins University, Bard College (Berlin), Barry University, Bowdoin College, Carleton College, Haverford College, Minerva College, Smith College, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Mentorship Program

Through our mentorship program, we aim to facilitate meaningful and impactful relationships between LALideres and skilled mentors, seeking to provide support in overcoming challenges and barriers students face. This program is a 6-month initiative where volunteers directly contribute to our LALideres’ development by mentoring them. Some of our last season results: 

- Mentoring Matches: 110 mentoring pairs formed.

- Mentoring Sessions: 370 sessions conducted.

- Impact: 94% of mentees and 87% of mentors reported significant positive changes in their personal and professional lives.

Our program is currently open for applications for Mentors until July 1st, 2024! If you want to become one of them and transform the life of a young Latin American leader, apply now here: https://survey.sogolytics.com/r/9Omjpf 

LALíderes highlights

Felipe Meneses - Brazil

Felipe, who was part of our first camp cohort, is now the Co-founder of Hyperplane. Thanks to his amazing work in tech entrepreneurship, he was the first Brazilian ever to be selected to be part of the Thiel Foundation Fellowship! The support from this community will propel his work! From the northeastern state of Sergipe to anywhere he dreams of achieving! Learn more about Felipe’s story here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7183082570413195265 

Luiza Vilanova - Brazil

Luiza has won the “Movimento Luz na Educação” (Movement Light in Education) Awards, organized by Brazil’s largest Broadcasting Company and Communications Conglomerate - Globo. She achieved fantastic recognition for her work on the “Tocando em Frente” project, which shares impact stories and extracurricular opportunities in an original curriculum for public schools. Her belief in education as a transformation platform continues to inspire us! Learn more about Luiza’s story here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7196977722403745792 

We invite you to follow our LinkedIn page for constant updates on LALíderes stories: https://co.linkedin.com/school/somos-lala/ 

Thanks to your support LALA continues to make significant strides in identifying, developing, and connecting young leaders across Latin America. Your contributions have been instrumental in enabling these achievements, ensuring that promising youth, regardless of their backgrounds, have access to opportunities that empower them to drive positive change in their communities and beyond.

Thank you for being a part of this incredible journey and helping us shape Latin America's future, one leader at a time!

Links:

• Webpage
• Our bootcamps recap