January 1, 2023  | By Eileen Kitrick

Sonia Adriana Gavilán Beltrán
Colegio Charry
Bogotá, Colombia

Thanks to donor support, CATCH has been able to expand our child health equity programs to countries beyond the United States, like Colombia, where our local team has trained more than 400 teachers to become champions for healthy habits and bring CATCH programs to thousands of students in their schools.

Teachers like Sonia Adriana in Bogotá, who says CATCH has provided her with an opportunity to learn how to integrate physical activity and social emotional learning into her classroom in order to help her students learn better and feel better.

“I am just happy,” she said. “[CATCH] has given us [teachers] the chance to bond through creativity, through love, through expression, through the physical and emotional connection to teaching.”

In Colombia alone, we have worked with the Ministry of Education and passionate educators in places like Quindío, Boyacá, Ibagué, and Tunja who have become champions and role models for healthy living within their schools, helping their students to embrace habits that improve their overall wellness.

One teacher said her CATCH training was the first opportunity she had to learn how the integration of physical activity and social emotional learning could positively impact her students. “Students learn better through movement. I feel motivated and enthusiastic to apply these activities more frequently in my classroom.”

We are thankful to our donors for their support of the work we do to empower school communities across the globe to cultivate environments of health.