Build Latin America's next generation of leaders!

Hello from LALA!

We hope you and your loved ones are well and keeping safe.

It is an exciting time at LALA! As we navigate 2022 and its mix of opportunities and challenges as the world recovers from the Pandemic, it gives us joy that with our donors, partners, staff, volunteers, students, and alumni, we are helping transform the leadership landscape of Latin America.

Over five years since our inception, this year marked the beginning of an exciting growth phase where we seek to triple our annual student intake by 2025.

Please find more information below on some key accomplishments that your support made possible for LALA, and learn about our upcoming plans! 

Launch of our new brand during LALA’s fifth birthday celebration

On 10th July, our community celebrated LALA’s 5th birthday with alumni, parents, staff, and donors coming together to showcase their gratitude and sense of belonging with emotional testimonials that reminded us of the importance of our community.

On top of the memorable encounter, we also launched our new brand and visual identity, which better represents our mission, goals, identity, and growth in Latin America - as well as makes us more recognizable in the process.

With this new look, we hope to showcase who we are as an organization and community. We are, indeed, the same LALA, just more conspicuous and consistent. To read more about the decision-making process behind our rebranding, as well as discover other details such as our new typefaces, iconography, and colors, we invite you to check out our revamped website.

Building the paths for the young leaders of the future

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the average unemployment rate for 15 to 24-year-olds reached 23.8% in the first quarter of 2021, the highest level recorded since this index began to be compiled in 2006 by the International Labor Organization. Besides not having access to opportunities, most young people do not feel prepared with the skills required in the positions available due to poor access to high-quality internet connectivity and education for skills and new technologies in the labor market.

Our mission is to systematically help young people develop high-impact careers that give them purpose, maximize their learning, and promote social mobility. We do this by removing financial, cultural, and access barriers to development opportunities and building a holistic ecosystem that creates space and access to high-impact careers. 

And to contribute to this mission, early this year, we started LALA’s High Impact Careers department, whose strategy focuses on removing barriers and broadening access to opportunities from a holistic perspective on the journey of our young leaders. We believe that offering relevant work opportunities to our students early in their careers can be a turning point towards personal and professional development and financial freedom. This is why we have developed our Internship Program.

The Internship Program is an initiative that connects LALA youth with paid work opportunities at the world’s top companies and non-profit organizations. The program offers a 6-week training to develop skills and prepare them for their initial professional journeys. Since its implementation in early 2021, the program has delivered 52 paid internships in 28 partner organizations and 6 countries (Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States).

Relying on multi-sector partners to leverage the largest number of opportunities is a key element of this initiative. 

Do you work with a company that would like to sponsor an intern? Kindly email felipe.amaral@somoslala.org today!

We are excited to welcome industry titans to the Board of Directors

As we enter an ambitious scaling phase to amplify our systemic impact in Latin America - LALA is thrilled to announce two new additions to our Board of Directors! 

We welcome Zé Dias, Partner and Managing Director of Remessa Online and C-level executive at EBANX, and Paulo Passoni, a renowned Latin American entrepreneur and investor.

Zé is an executive with over 20 years of experience developing winning cultures and teams, long and short-term plans, and improving P&L performance in several industries. He is currently acting as partner and Managing Director for Remessa Online and is overseeing its integration with EBANX. As a leader, Zé has longstanding experience in developing enterprises and is an ardent supporter of non-profit initiatives.

Paulo created and led SoftBank’s truly independent Latin America $5bn fund alongside Marcelo Claure and Shu Nyatta. The fund invested in almost 80 growth equity companies from 2019 to 2022 and catalyzed a new wave of investments by local and global firms within the LatAm region. He left SoftBank in April 2022 and intends on joining Shu in creating a new independent firm focused on growth equity in Latin America in April 2023. He is an investment guru with vast experience in Latin America and globally. He is a big believer in Latin America’s potential to produce innovation and is deeply involved in social causes via Fundação Estudar, Renova Brasil, and LALA

As LALA scales and our operations become more complex and international, it gives us great confidence to count on their guidance and oversight as Board members.

We thank you once again for all your support as LALA marks five years of impact - Thank you for supporting our scholarship fund!

"Obrigracias," from the entire LALA community, your support is making an impact across Latin America.

Gratefully,

Diego Ontaneda, Co-founder & CEO

Links:

• Visit the LALA new website

Hello from LALA!

We hope that 2022 is treating you well, and allowing you to reconnect in-person with more of your loved ones and hobbies.

Thanks to supporters like you, LALA has had a strong and exciting start to the year, as 2022 marked the beginning of our three year plan to triple our annual student intake from 500 to 1,500, with a goal of bringing 500 young leaders into LALA in Spanish, Portuguese, and English programs each year by 2025.  Thank you for your commitment to sustainable development in Latin America and for believing in the potential of the next generation to transform their communities!

Please find more information below on some key accomplishments that your support made possible for LALA, and learn about our upcoming plans! 

Preparing for 3x growth:

In order to achieve our 3x student intake goals,  LALA must (i) scale our outreach capacity to find more high quality and high potential applicants while maintaining our focus on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access (DEIA), (ii) scale our operational capacity to sustain 3x growth, and (iii) scale our ecosystem’s capacity to enrich the LALA leadership journeys of our students after their initial leadership bootcamp.

In our last report, we shared more detail about our plans and advancements for DEIA-focused outreach across the region. We are applying our DEIA experience in Brazil to guide our growth across Hispanic Latin America. In Brazil, we redesigned our recruitment machine by focusing our efforts to find BIPOC students through local partners, ensuring our diversity reflects the reality of the region, and empowering BIPOC alums to self-organize & co-lead the change with us.

The early results from LALA Brazil are encouraging: 60% of participants at our next Bootcamp in Portuguese self-identify as BIPOC! 90% of students receive financial aid, and 70% come from underrepresented backgrounds. 

While we continue to prioritize our DEIA recruitment, LALA has begun 2022 with a heavy focus on our operational and ecosystem capacity building. We are excited to share the progress with you!

Our team has been growing!:

LALA’s mission to change the lives of over 10,000 Latin American young leaders takes deep commitment, skill, alignment of purpose, and a dedicated team.

Our team has been growing along with LALA, and some of the recent members to join our team are: Ecosystem Junior Manager Maria Clara who manages the infrastructures that support alumni engagement & development; Bootcamp Operations Manager Carolina Santos who works on scaling LALA’s entrypoint programs across the Latin American region; and Senior Manager of High Impact Careers Patricia Santana who is focused on removing the barriers that prevent our students from accessing the best university and career opportunities to reach their greatest potential. 

We are very excited to continue to build and grow in a way that elevates the impact that LALA is spearheading both in the short term and long term. Our dream is to transform our region and change the world together, and thus we will continue to invite talented and tenacious professionals to join the team.

Organizing our Ecosystem:

With the growth of our community to over 1200 alumni and 20 ecosystem programs, and our projected 3x short-term growth,  LALA unified recruitment into a single Ecosystem Application to streamline participation for both volunteers and program owners.

In January, we gathered an Ecosystem Application Task Force of 7 people, composed of representatives for tech, promotion, DEIA and programs to design a smooth process. On February 12th, we launched the application and received a total of 245 candidates by March 6th. Our goal was to distribute opportunities more equitably and improve volunteer retention rates. It was a huge coordination effort, but we are happy to say that we reached 80% of our recruitment goal!

The verdict is still out on how the EcosApp will influence the volunteer experience for Wind & Fire Season programming (March to August). Our hope is that LALums were better able to schedule their engagement with LALA among other priorities with school, work and family. We plan to collect volunteer feedback at the end of the season and launch the 2nd edition of the EcosApp in August, looking ahead to the Earth & Water Seasons (August to February).

2020-2023 Campaign Goal:

We are excited to report that we are well on track for our 2020-2023 Campaign Goals! Of our US$4.5M fundraising target, we have already received US$1.85M and have another US$1.05M committed for 2022-23, totalling US$2.9M, or 64% of our Campaign target!!

Thanks to the generous support of The Efrusy Family Foundation, we have now purchased facilities in Medellin to house our Leadership Academy! With this small five-storey apartment building, we will begin to develop our modular urban campus concept. We will now begin to evaluate the neighboring houses in the area for attractive opportunities that we can use immediately for housing (student & faculty), office space, and for the optionality for future development. As we continue to look at expanding our footprint, please let us know if you’d be interested in partnering with us in this area!

We are honored to be among the first partners of the Plataforma Vélez Reyes (PVR), the philanthropic vehicle that David Vélez and Mariel Reyes have created to bring to life their inspirational public commitment to Latin American development. PVR has committed a US$50K lead grant and a 30% match on donations to LALA (with a US$200K cap!).

We are thrilled to have been selected to join Imaginable Futures’ portfolio. This is a huge testament to the incredible work our team has been doing, and we are optimistic for the possibilities that this partnership will unlock.

Accel Partners has made a generous pledge of US$150K/yr for the next three years! If you would like to explore how your company might partner with LALA too, we’d love to talk about it!

If you would like to learn more about how to get more involved with our Campaign, don’t hesitate to reach out to juntos@somoslala.org!

As we enter this new scaling phase and increase the depth of development offerings in LALA's Ecosystem, we need your partnership!

 "Obrigracias" from the entire LALA community, your support is making an impact across Latin America.

Gratefully,

Diego Ontaneda, Co-Founder & CEO

Links:

• LALA's Annual Call 2021
• LALA's updated website
• Become a LALA mentor in 2022! Learn about our Mentorship Program