18.02.2021

Science cooperation and fight against COVID-19 in Latin America

Inspiring the next generation of scientists in Latin America.  This is the mission of Science Clubs Colombia (Clubes de Ciencia Colombia – www.clubesdeciencia.co), a Colombian citizen initiative to bring science to rural and remote areas in Colombia.

Roger D. Castillo is a Colombian DAAD scholar at the University of Tübingen since 2017. Actually, he is doing his Ph.D in the department of Pharmaceutical Biology at the Pharmaceutical Institute in the group of PD Dr. Bertolt Gust. In 2019, Roger D. Castillo applied to join the Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Maths (STEAM) education initiative in order to pass his experience on to future scientist in Colombia. The aim of the program is to design short, one week of STEAM courses using project-based learning and hands-on experience for kids and young people in rural areas of Latin America. Science Clubs Colombia was born in 2015 as a program hosted in Colombia as part of the global initiative Science Clubs International (www.scienceclubsint.org). Since then, Science Clubs International expanded to several countries in and around of Iberoamerica.  The organization has been working with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as an important stakeholder to keep in touch with the Colombian scholars in Germany.

The mission of Science Clubs Colombia is to expand scientific education for children and young people in Colombia for inspiring and mentoring the next generation of scientists in Latin America, and to create an international network for academic and scientific collaborations. In 2019, 5316 children of all ages participated in this program, instructed by 506 researchers from all around the world. Among the instructors were eleven DAAD scholars with either Ph.D or Master degree, including Roger D. Castillo (holding a DAAD scholar since 2017) and one of the found members of Science Clubs Colombia, Bryann Avendaño (DAAD scholar in 2014). They worked together in a STEAM course in Tuquerres, a rural and remote area of Nariño-Colombia. Science Clubs Colombia built connections between Roger, Bryann and the rural communities in Nariño.