Victoria Marambio ‘10 from Chile

Transforming Education in Chile
UWC Red Cross Nordic alum Sebastián Marambio, brother of UWC Costa Rica alumna Victoria Marambio (‘10), realized that one of the most efficient ways to address the educational gap dividing richer and poorer students was to work on providing them with learning opportunities in the summer.

Victoria tells us, “research shows that kids who have few learning opportunities during the breaks--who are more often than not those from low-income families--lose up to 3 months of learning compared to their better-off peers and thusly start the academic year already at a disadvantage.”

Armed with solid research and a vision to create more and better learning opportunities for Chilean youth during their school breaks, Sebastián started in 2013 an educational NGO called Consejo de Curso.

In May 2014, after she graduated from Middlebury College--where Victoria majored in psychology--she returned to Chile and interned with her brother at Consejo de Curso.

During those months, Victoria helped develop the first version of the Academia de Emprendimiento Social--a week-long winter program where high schoolers learn about social entrepreneurship.

In 2015, Victoria joined Consejo de Curso full time by supporting “everything and anything to do with communications” and is now the Sub-Director for the NGO.

Consejo de Curso has inspired and empowered 15,000 students and 1,400 educators in 40 schools across two countries through their summer camps and reading programs.  

“One of the main ways in which my UWC background has helped me in Consejo de Curso is by giving me the best possible example of what education is supposed to be like.

Education is much more than whatever one needs to study to “ace” a given test.  It’s so much more than living up to any society’s standards.  Education is empowerment; it’s community; it’s dialogue.  Education enables and informs conversation. It lights paths ahead of each of us, ways that and nurtures each other when done correctly.

Education of the kind that I experienced at UWC Costa Rica is the kind that I would like for everybody to have access to.”
--Victoria Marambio ‘10

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