With our lives constantly moving we now look back and we are glad to see how we are progressing with our various projects. Some of them are in the structuring phase, so we will tell you everything about those in future newsletters. Right now, and if you read our previous updates and follow us on social media you know, we are working on our WingCycle2 project, where we granted scholarships to children and youth so they can access the acquisition of English as their second language.
We want BIG!
If you haven’t read our previous newsletters you can do so here, and if you don’t follow us on social media already, please check it out because we are constantly sharing our stories and achievements, so you can start helping us expand our wings by sharing our content! Before we continue, we want to thank you, and all of our supporters, family, and friends, who have been helping us throughout this process, sharing our social media, donating, and giving us love!
Big quack as thank you to all of you!
What Our Duck Has Been Up ToRemember the WingCycle2 project? Is a project where we aim to offer scholarships that grant access to English language acquisition to children and youth in Colombia. We will be supporting their educative processes and ensuring they will have many more opportunities for their futures and reducing the poverty cycles. We are sure you remember Emilse, from our April newsletter, she is one of our beneficiaries and is happily studying and learning English. She wakes up really early to take her classes and she keeps her motivation high like our duck! In our previous newsletter, we told you that we already gave 8 scholarships, creating this way our first group of Winged Students, who live in Manizales, a small city in the middle of the Colombian coffee area. Our eight Winged Students are Estefanía Rodas, Danna Salgado, Laura Ramirez, Laura Marcela Nañez, Khely Estrada, Yuliana Andrea de la Pava, Yeraldine Patiño and Juan Pablo Ospina.
We are working together with Cruzada Social Foundation in Manizales, who are giving us the location, classroom, and materials for them to receive their classes. Juan Pablo told us he was really happy to have the opportunity to learn since he feels that knowing another language will open many doors for him. We are sure you remember Emilse, from our April newsletter, she is one of our beneficiaries and is happily studying and learning English. She wakes up really early to take her classes and she keeps her motivation high like our duck!
In their interactions with each other and their teachers, the students expressed their heartfelt gratitude for the chance to learn English. They recognized that fluency in this global language would open doors to a world of possibilities, including higher education abroad, international career opportunities, and the ability to communicate with people from diverse cultures. We want to be telling you many more experiences like Emilse’s and Juan Pablo’s in the future! That is why we plan to expand our scholarships to form more groups of Winged students, so we can impact the greatest part of the community. This project is already on the run and we couldn’t be happier! Please check our social media to keep yourself updated and full of hope, like us 😀
The People Behind Our Duck Wings
In this brand new section, we will be sharing with you about members of our WingedTeam. People that have been working passionately and tirelessly behind our duck wings, from managing projects, and meeting with partners, to developing our brand, editing media posts, promoting donations, and in general WingedPeople are part of a team of 100% volunteers that work fully remote from 7 different places of the world and 4 different timezones!! We mean it when we say we like to spread our wings!
Today, we are pleased to introduce you to Maria Alejandra McCallum, she is Colombian but has been living in the United States for two years, and she is the Wingcycle Project Lead and Volunteers Coordinator of The Winged Foundation. She has made WingCycle2 Project from scratch into a reality and the Team at Winged wants to tell you more about her!
Why The Winged Foundation? Maria says: “Because I believe that education allows us to open doors both personally and professionally. In my personal experience knowing English allowed me to break the language barrier and take an exchange program in the United States, met the love of my life, and live and work in a new country”. She believes knowing another language like English allows us to connect with other cultures and expand our vision of the world, and that’s where the idea of Wingcycle2 was born, to provide English scholarships to children and young people from vulnerable communities in Colombia and give them the impetus to fulfill their dreams.
“My experience working with the foundation has been very enriching, helping others gives me a purpose in my life. I was very fortunate to have resources that allowed me to access education and the support of my family, but I am aware that many young people want to have a big future, but have neither the economic resources nor the support of anyone to do so”, states Maria regarding her experience.
Maria has been the Project Lead of our Wingcycle2 project, putting all of her efforts as a volunteer on it, and we are very proud to have her because we have accomplished a lot in so little time! “We are very fortunate to have a partner in Canada, a language academy specialized in teaching English and French, which shares our vision of providing new opportunities for Colombian children and youth. Thanks to them we can reach more young people with our project. As a foundation we want to be that support, that first opportunity to encourage them to continue dreaming”, she finalized.
If you want to know more about our passionate team members, don’t forget to read our monthly newsletter for more inspiring stories! And, of course, follow us everywhere 😉
Twitcher Safari
We didn’t wanna leave before thanking TwitcherSafari for the amazing Winged brand decoration and for donating to our duck, big quack from Canada to Africa!!
Stay tuned to know more about our Duck’s journey in Africa! Our mindset is simple: the more we give, the better. And guess what? You can be part of it too! We are currently collecting technology equipment (computers, tablets, smartphones, etc.) to give them a second chance at service within our Colombian community.
These tools will allow our Winged Students to access their courses and education. If you happen to be in Canada and have any tech equipment to spare, please fill out this form. Take a moment to browse through our latest gallery, featuring heartwarming images of our proud Winged Students.