Tomás Despouy

Whilst teaching, I felt that the current school curriculum was failing to equip students with the vital leadership and 21st skills which they need to flourish after school. In addition, the current model of schooling seemed to place the student at the side line, instead of in the centre, where they need to be to control their own learning.

Through the Enseña Chile program, I became familiar with the work of Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth and the Human Centred Design approach to problem solving. Using these methodologies,  I created Panal’s leadership development program for students, to create a way to try to prepare students for the future, where they control their own learning and can be active agents of change within their schools and communities.

In 2011 with help of other 12 Enseña Chile teachers, we started with the first pilots which help us to create the extracurricular program for our students.

In 2012, I was invited to present Panal at a Teach For All network conference for alumni in Peru, where I met Agustina Faustin from Enseña por Argentina (Teach For Argentina) and she felt that student passiveness was also affecting students in their country and stopping change to happen. She implemented Panal first pilot abroad. In 2013, we were selected by Teach For All to join a one week social innovation program in London, England, where I met Elena Vázquez from Empieza por Educar (Teach For Spain) and later, she implemented a pilot back in her country and became cofounder of Panal Global, the international organization that aligns all other partners from the region.

From that date until today, we have participated in Teach For All instances such as roundtables (2016, Washington, US), Global Innovation Summit (2016, Puebla, Mexico) and Global Conference (2017, Bogota, Colombia)