Progress has been made on the new Still I Rise International School for refugee and vulnerable children that will open in Bogota, Colombia. In recent days, important steps have been taken, including positive talks with local institutions. The aim is to open the International School by early 2024.

Still I Rise has raised over 416,000 euros in donations for the project. This is far more than expected, and the figure will be doubled by a family-run foundation that decided to allocate the equivalent of the amount to Still I Rise’s International School in Nairobi.

The new Still I Rise International School in Bogota will operate on the model of the one opened in Kenya in December 2020, and it will offer high-quality education for free to children who otherwise would not have access to the most prestigious educational circuits, such as the International Baccalaureate (IB), which is implemented in Still I Rise International Schools.

According to Unicef data, about 16 percent of adolescents in Colombia do not attend upper secondary school. Internally displaced persons (5.2 million people in the country), refugees (2.5 million) and vulnerable or low-income populations are most likely to drop out of school.

«Children who belong to these segments of the population in Colombia often live in extremely precarious conditions, exposed to the risk of violence and forced in many cases to drop out of school,» says Giulia Cicoli, Communications and Fundraising Director of Still I Rise. «We will do our best to make a real impact on the lives of these children and the community in which they live.»