Compaz Foundation is a non-profit organization, created by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Juan Manuel Santos, to promote peace-building in Colombia and around the world. Compaz believes that individuals have the ability to transform their communities through conscious leadership, the strengthening of peace-building skills, the exchange of knowledge and by immersing themselves in favorable scenarios to develop new ideas and experiences.
Juan Manuel Santos
Compaz has selected three leaders who will be attending One Young World’s Annual Summit in 2021, to be held in Munich. The participants are young leaders from communities that have been deeply affected by conflict. Despite those circumstances, they have managed to push through and set an example of reconciliation and teamwork.
The summit will allow these young leaders to learn about the experiences of people who share their backgrounds and are now contributing to build a better world through innovation and hope. It will also be an opportunity to show what these young leaders are doing through their initiatives and to recognize that their efforts have not been in vain.
The Compaz Leaders will prove that Colombia has the best asset to build peace: its people.
Meet the Compaz Leaders
Nevis Cadena
Nevis is a 26-year-old from El Charco, a municipality in Nariño department in Colombia. He is currently studying to obtain his bachelor's degree in international business in education.
He is the head of Frutichar, a social entrepreneurship project that promotes native fruit crops to substitute illicit crops. Through Frutichar, Nevis and his team provide job stability to young people who are victims of the conflict and to single mothers in their territory.
Diana Cortes
Diana is a young dancer from Tumaco, a municipality in the Nariño department in Colombia, and she is the founder of a dance company called Pacific Dance.
At Pacific Dance, boys, girls and young people meet three times a week to learn new dance step and choreographies, managing to make dance an option to stay away from conflict. Diana has succeeded in creating a strategy to prevent the recruitment of children by illegal armed groups, consolidating a peace-building mechanism in Tumaco.
Laly Fernando Riascos
Laly is a 19-year-old young man from Guapi, a municipality in the Cauca department in Colombia. He is part of the Communications network of boys, girls, teenagers and youth of Guapi, a project that seeks to empower youth on issues related to citizen participation, communication, advocacy and peace-building.
In his childhood, Laly was a victim of the armed conflict due to the multiple confrontations between insurgent groups in the Colombian Pacific coast. Nevertheless, he is a leader who promotes reconciliation and forgiveness.
Through the Network, Laly works to promote changes that have a positive impact on the social and personal life of the children they mentor.
Laly's participation in One Young World’s Annual Summit 2021 is thanks to Save The Children Colombia
Juan Manuel Santos opened the One Young World Summit 2017 in Bogotá, Colombia. His opening address introduced the overarching theme of the 2017 Summit, which was Peace and Reconciliation and the role young people play in propagating peace. Recipient of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, it was President Santos himself who oversaw the construction of the historic peace agreement with the FARC in 2016, ending a civil war spanning half a century.
