Fundación Escuela Taller de Bogotá

Learning By Doing

Fundación Escuela Taller de Bogotá (or the Workshop School of Bogotá Foundation) is an entity very near and dear to my heart. Having first encountered it while on a study abroad trip in college, I fell in love with the school workshop’s mission of training young people with a philosophy of “learning by doing” in vocations that ranged from carpentry, culinary arts, paper-making, construction, and more.

I was part of a team from the University of Washington that helped create strategic connections so the school could receive a generous donation of computer and teaching resources from Microsoft’s Solidario program in Latin America. I taught English at the school for a year as part of an internship shortly thereafter. And when I returned to the country to follow my dreams of helping the schools be more visible and commercialize their crafts, it was an honor and a privilege to volunteer in creating a short-lived, but powerful online catalog.