My life always has been linked with a passionate search for social change, trying to help people with fewer resources and opportunities. At the beginning I thought that the only way to help people was to work with institutions like the church or very grassroots charity organizations. So at secondary school and university I used to visit underprivileged neighbourhoods in the North and South of my country during my holidays. I loved the connection with these communities; giving lessons for their children, helping them with their daily work, sharing experience and lifestyles. I got to build strong links with the families there and I could understand the difficulties they met everyday.
What else could I do to help these communities to have a better quality of Life? This was what I asked myself before deciding what to study at University. Education Science was the way I chose. I knew it would provide me with professional tools to have an important role promoting a social change in improving low income populations lives.
Then my desire to develop a stronger career in the citizen sector motivated me to pursue a Master degree in Management and Education. At that moment, I was working in social organizations and in the public sector as well. Even though I gained a lot of experience and exposure to social problems, I felt that there was something more complex connected with the sources of these existing social problems. That was the time when I met Ashoka and its social entrepreneurs and made me more conscious of the need to generate innovations to solve deep social problems through its roots. Nowadays, with my current role at Changemakers I’ve been offered the best possible platform to connect local social innovators with global and new resources through an online community, encouraging at the same time collaboration with each other, sharing experiences, knowledge and inspiration from the ideas of the other. I’m sure this is the way we can have an important role seeking for a real change in the sector.
I love my country and my ‘Buenos Aires querido’ where I have my family and friends. However, I love travelling and getting to know new cultures and sharing different experiences with the rural communities I visit. Besides, I enjoy adventures and sports. That’s why I really like trekking in the mountain interacting with the people I meet on my way.
My inspiration, nowadays, is a changemakers’ winner “3 Sisters” (www.3sisters.com) I encourage you to know the work they are implementing in Nepal for rural women empowerment seeking for social change in an innovative approach.
I would like to see a fair world, with more opportunities for those who have less access to a better quality of life. I want to see an integrated world through links of cooperation and empathy.
Focused on Education as a way of changing future generation, I would like to see every child having access to proper education in order to have a brighter future.
Pato is working as Projects Manager at the Community Team. Prior to CM, she worked in Ashoka’s initiative called Citizen Base Initiative (Premio Ashoka) in the Southern Cone from 2003 to 2005. Then she led several projects from social civil organizations like Caritas Argentina, La Usina and CLAYSS (Latin America Learning Service Center). She has also worked in the program "Families for Social Inclusion" from the National Ministry of Social Development. In 2007, she took part in a project involving public schools from vulnerable communities, run by UNESCO's International Institute for Education Planning and San Andrés University. Pato has a degree in Education and a Master´s degree in Education Management. She was born and lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
