Publications /
Opinion

Back
ADEL Portrait, Leonardo Párraga, Executive Director of the BogotArt Foundation
Authors
Sabine Cessou
May 22, 2020

He is a young man like no other. One can spot him easily in a crowd by the way he dresses and addresses the issues with which he is concerned. Leonardo Párraga, an award-winning social entrepreneur and alternative education activist, was born in Colombia with the soul of an artist. He writes poetry, engages with photography, and finds inspiration in the writings of Walt Whitman, whom he describes as the poet of “interconnectedness”.

At 25, he left Bogotá for Harvard University, for a Master’s program in International Education Policy. At the time, he had already spent five years working on “how to create community engagement through non formal education”, he explains. He wanted to complement his experience with the arts and creative thinking, and “explore how education can foster peace in the Colombian context”. He also felt like being part of an international network of practicioners in his field, to help him “get other insights on how to foster social change and activism in a more effective way”.

Since his year spent in Harvard, he has been traveling a lot, but has been fully back in Bogota since 2019. He launched the BogotArt Foundation in 2013, to conduct work at the intersection of art and community development in vulnerable neighborhoods. In 2016, his team started to expand through partnerships, working on transformation in a neighborhood “through creativity, diverging thinking and self-knowledge”. That was the year Leonardo Párraga became an Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leader (ADEL), and travelled across the Atlantic to Marrakech to take part in the Policy Center for the New South’s young professionals program and flagship conference, the Atlantic Dialogues. There, he found a unique “kind of network” with young professionnals from all horizons. “Usually, networks are really specialized, but this was different, something magical and enlightening. I learned about South-South cooperation, something I had not seen before with direct connection between Africa and Latin America”.

Towards peace and reconciliation

The BogotArt Foundation has now reached a third stage, looking for ways of achieving peace and reconciliation. It launched a campaign called Cartas por la Reconciliación (Letters for Reconciliation), with two other organizations, the Junior Chamber International and Youth for Youth Foundation. “We realized we could bridge the gap between citizens and the FARC ex-combatants, to connect them and help to dismantle stereotypes and labels about the other, that generate hatred and negative feelings”, Leonardo Párraga recalls. More than 5 000 people participated, in the broader context of the implementation of a peace agreement. Four field visits were also organized for 500 people into FARC strongholds, in order to have “face to face conversations”.

This campaign, thanks to its large visibility in the media, allowed the Colombian people to “notice the importance of reconciliation and of generating spaces to interact with one another”, he says. It nurtured the global policy paper We are here, a United Nations study on the role of youth in peace processes, where the willingness of society at large to welcome back ex-combatants of armed groups such as FARC was highlighted. He received the Youth Carnegie Peace Prize in 2018 and was named the Youth Ambassador of the Peace Palace in the Netherlands. In 2019, he was awarded the 1 Billion Acts Hero Award during the Nobel Peace Laureates Summit in Mexico, and was part of the ADEL alumni delegation to the Paris Peace Forum. In December 2019, he also came back to Marrakech to address the 2019 ADEL Cohort about the importance of collective memory in the reconciliation process.

A new campaign: Letters for Healing

The Covid-19 crisis has brought about an opportunity for further engagement, and has led Leonardo towards a new campaign, Letters for Healing, to help others cope with the crisis. With two international partners, he intends to connect people suffering from the crisis with messages of support and understanding, sent by people from all over the world. The recipients, spread across Colombia, Mexico and Spain, will be health practicioners, essential workers in supermarkets, delivery and cleaning services, but also infected people and their family members. Formally launched on May 22nd, 2020, the campaign seeks to improve mental health in this tough period and aims at sending 20 000 letters by the end of the year.

Inspired by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu for their work on peace and reconciliation, he also mentions Martin Luther King and his letter from the Birmingham jail, as a “powerful way to transform and give perspective on a new kind of society”. The singer Nessi Gomes catches his attention with the song All Related, about how much human beings are interconnected and can only thrive together. “If we were more mindful of the consequences that our actions have in our environment, we would reduce the harm we do to the world”.  Sabine Cessou

You can consult Leonardo’s Portrait along with others on the ADEL Portrait page

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    Paul Isbell
    October 11, 2024
    The evolving structure of international power—from the erosion of unipolarity to the emergence of multipolarity (though still susceptible to a scenario where multipolarity evolves into a new form of bipolarity)—is giving rise to various material and ideological factors that are steering global dynamics toward a new ‘regionalization of globalization’. The real opportunity lies in not just considering a new form of regionalism, but in focusing on the potential of a new kind of region: ...
  • Authors
    Paul Isbell
    October 9, 2024
    From a realist perspective, during a period of rising multipolarity, the Atlantic Basin can be identified as an emerging geostrategic region and a potential focal point of geostrategic competition, especially in the Southern Atlantic, raising the sub-basin’s strategic significance and its potential strategic autonomy. The liberal perspective – although its highest goal might be a global multilateral order – has embraced regionalism before, under the bipolar international regime of t ...
  • Authors
    September 20, 2024
    Le minilatéralisme, approche flexible et rapide de la coopération internationale, s'avère efficace pour relever des défis communs entre un petit nombre d'États. Inspiré du « Dialogue 5+5 » méditerranéen, ce concept est proposé pour renforcer la coopération euro-africaine dans l'espace atlantique, en créant un forum « 3+3 » réunissant l'Espagne, la France, le Portugal, le Maroc, la Mauritanie et le Sénégal. Ce cadre permettrait de répondre aux enjeux sécuritaires, économiques et migr ...
  • Authors
    Policy Center for the New South
    July 26, 2024
    The Atlantic region is grappling with a host of challenges that require urgent attention. Economic and financial struggles, social unrest, and political changes are transforming the geopolitical landscape of the region. Issues including unemployment, poverty, violence, extremism, climate change, and migration are becoming more pressing, making it essential to find lasting solutions. In this context, it is crucial to create inclusive discussions between different generations and regi ...
  • Authors
    Constance Berry Newman
    July 2, 2024
    Immigration has never been without tensions. In the United States, immigration remains a contentious issue that now, more than ever, dominates election campaigns. A 727-kilometer wall has been constructed on the US-Mexico border to halt the influx of migrants from the south. In Europe, the rise of far-right parties over the past twenty years has culminated in them becoming a major political force in the European Parliament ahead of the June 2024 elections. The tension around immigr ...
  • Authors
    April 9, 2024
    Un proverbe africain dit, seul on va plus vite ; ensemble on va plus loin. C’est dans cet esprit de l’action et du leadership collectifs que s’insère l’initiative de l’Afrique atlantique initiée par le Maroc et qui vise la création des conditions nécessaires pour la construction d’une région Afrique/Atlantique stable, prospère et tournée vers la mer. À cette première initiative s’est ajoutée une deuxième, celle de la facilitation de l’accès à la mer aux pays du Sahel, e ...
  • Authors
    Roxy Ndebumadu
    February 9, 2024
    Councilwoman Roxy Ndebumadu is a technology entrepreneur, and special advisor on beneficial AI, online safety and emerging technology. As a two term-elected official, she represents the City of Bowie, the fifth largest city in Maryland. She is also a 2023 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program. Learn more about her here. Amidst the churning tides of globalization, in which currents of tradition meet the winds of change, there is a call for a new international c ...
  • Authors
    Paul Isbell
    January 3, 2024
    The strategic significance of the southern Atlantic is growing, driven by two underlying dynamics. Firstly, we have seen the geostrategic capabilities of the southern Atlantic states and their inhabitants strengthen and the value of their strategic assets rise, despite lingering internal vulnerabilities and frequent instability, often caused by the northern Atlantic and, on occasion, Eurasia. Secondly, the way in which the southern Atlantic states are pursuing and exploiting the pot ...