Director of the Escuela Nueva Foundation
Vicky is an educator in Bogota known internationally for creating the Escuela Nueva pedagogical model.
Colbert, born in the United States, is a sociologist at the Javeriana University and has two master’s degrees, one in the sociology of education and another in comparative education, both from Stanford.
Upon returning to Colombia, She began to work with rural teachers who taught in the unitary primary schools, where there was only one teacher for all grades and subjects. Together with the pedagogue Óscar Mogollón and the adviser of Usaid Beryl Levinger, designed a new pedagogical model -which they named Escuela Nueva- that sought to turn children into participatory actors (instead of passive subjects) of the learning process and teachers into their guides
Its implementation was especially useful in rural environments where education was very precarious and where the dropout rate was very high, helping teachers to teach multiple levels in classrooms where children of different ages should live together.
Thanks to the good results of the model, in 1983 she was appointed Deputy Minister of Education. From the Ministry, the Escuela Nueva model reached 24,000 schools in the country. After leaving the Government, Colbert continued to promote the idea as an adviser in education for Latin America of Unicef
In 1987 Colbert created the New School Foundation Volvamos a la Gente (FEN) to expand and improve the model nationally and internationally. In 1991 it was included as one of the pillars of the National Development Plan.
At that time the Foundation began to think about adapting the Escuela Nueva model to urban environments, baptizing it Urban Active School. That was the basis for the program that was born in 2001 to serve children from displaced communities.
The success of the model, which has been replicated so far in 16 countries, has earned Colbert a number of international awards in education: the Wise Prize – the ‘Nobel’ in education – in 2013, the prize for ‘global citizens’ from the Clinton Global Initiative of former Gringo President Bill Clinton in 2007, the Outstanding Social Entrepreneurs Award from the Swiss Schwab Foundation (founded by Klaus Schwab, the creator of the World Economic Forum) and the Henry Kravi Leadership Award
s from the Claremont McKenna university in 2011.
In addition, the Escuela Nueva Foundation has been chosen twice as one of the 100 best NGOs in the world by the Swiss magazine The Global Journal.