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Latido Latino is the main gathering of  Teach For All network alumni from across Latin America, organized by Alumni Coordinators and Network Connectors from the region. The 2023 edition brought more than 200 people to Barranquilla, Colombia, including alumni, participants, staff, students and strategic allies of the Teach For All network. Attendees representing 13 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, the United States, and Uruguay.

In addition to bringing together alumni from across the region, this year Latido Latino focused on demonstrating individual and collective impact and contribution to systemic change in three main areas:

• Connecting participants to help them learn from each other and exchange tools to help  enhance their  impact.
• Join together in the search for better opportunities for children and youth in Latin America.
• Recognize our role as part of a movement that works towards educational equity and social justice.

For the first time this year, we decided to integrate  school visits into the agenda  to allow attendees to connect their learnings from the event with the educational reality in Colombia and the challenges we each face in our own contexts. The visits also allowed us to connect with  members of the schools and institutions to collectively work on possible solutions for our most prominent challenges.

Another innovation during this edition of Latido Latino was that we piloted a hybrid experience. Prior to the in-person event, Network Connectors conducted four virtual sessions open to any alumni from Latin America to talk about their identity and role as alumni of the Teach For All global network as well as an open Q&A space for those who were going to attend the in-person gathering. During the event, we live-streamed two sessions on Discord so that those who couldn’t attend in person were still able to engage. During another session we also had two alumni from Malaysia and Thailand join us via Zoom to share their testimony and experience collaborating in an  exchange project with “English for All”, an initiative led by alumni from Ensina Brasil. 

As a whole, the event really demonstrated the role and collective impact of the alumni in the region. Alumni were able to share ideas and projects with peers from different countries and contexts, and come together around a shared purpose and similar challenges. Enseña Chile alumnus Vicente Villalobos shared that he appreciated that the event gave him the opportunity to “reflect about problems and challenges we have in common and face as teachers in this particular region, and the very diverse perspectives to address these problems.” 

This event definitely helped generate synergies across borders and we are excited to see how these continue and develop throughout the year. As Lina Corredor, an Enseña por Colombia alumna, shared, “Latido Latino was the opening to think about my experience as an educator of a wide network with opportunities for training and support to continue developing my skills as a leader.” She added that the event “invited me to reflect more on our collective impact and how strong we can be together. I want to continue developing as an educator to impact the alumni network in my country and to think about systemic solutions for education.”

Ultimately, the event proved, once again,  that spaces like Latido Latino  where ideas, challenges, learning and actions for change are shared across with our alumni network, are the ones that drive progress towards our vision of contributing to the systemic impact that our region needs to transform education. 

We can’t wait for  the next edition of Latido Latino, which will be held in Uruguay next year and hope to continue building on all the main lessons learned this year and continuing to work with strategic allies in the region to continue strengthening our alumni impact.

Learn more about Latido Latino 2023 in the impact report here.