PHILADELPHIA, September 18, 2024–Camilo Fonseca Velásquez, Macro Sector Director of Creative, Cultural and Graphic Industries for the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, and Mariana Villamizar, Director of Public and Corporate Relations for Grupo Éxito, today were named co-recipients of the 2024 James and Carol Hovey Eisenhower Fellowships Impact Award for their work to support social enterprises in Colombia.
Fonseca and Villamizar, Eisenhower Fellows from Colombia in 2019 and 2014, respectively, were selected for EF’s second annual Impact Award to recognize an Eisenhower Fellow or group of Fellows for outstanding project achievement in generating positive impact in their society.
Their winning project was the work of RECON, an online platform they lead that works to identify, inspire, connect and strengthen social entrepreneurship and peace-building opportunities in a country dealing with the consequences of the long-running war between the government, organized crime syndicates, Far-Left guerrillas and Far-Right paramilitary groups.
Since its founding in 2014, RECON has created a community of social enterprises with nearly 5000 social business models, contributing to poverty and inequality reduction while confronting serious security risks to strengthen peacebuilding and environmental protections in Colombia.
“The tireless work of Camilo Fonseca and Mariana Villamizar in strengthening social enterprises has helped improve the quality of life in Colombia,” said Eisenhower Fellowships President George de Lama. “In less than a decade since its founding, RECON’s inspiring reach to some of the most remote and long-neglected corners of the country has led to impressive social and economic advances.”
Focusing on sustainable development and investing in education, RECON has positively touched the lives of more than 500,000 Colombians and strengthened more than 500 social enterprises through training and consolidation of their business models across the country. These include:
- Thanks to RECON, more than 120 social ventures have been connected with the country’s private sector to drive innovative news solutions for poverty reduction, impacting more than 100,000 people.
- They join 400 social entrepreneurships in the RECON community focused on women’s empowerment and the pursuit of gender equality in Colombia.
- More than 21,000 people in just four metropolitan areas–Malambo, Atlántico; Santa Marta, Magdalena; Villavicencio Meta and Soacha, Cundinamarca–now have equitable access to drinking water and hygiene under their social entrepreneurship strategies.
- Some 2100 social entrepreneurships working to build peace and safeguard human rights after decades of war across Colombia are part of the RECON community, which has some 223 social enterprises operating in longtime conflict zones.
- Under Villamizar’s and Fonseca’s leadership, more than 1700 Colombian social entrepreneurships focused on the care and protection of the environment have defied constant threat and become part of the RECON community. Over the last two years, Colombia has been the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists, with 139 murdered in 2022 and 2023, far more than any other nation.
- The organization was instrumental in helping pass the first social entrepreneurship law in Latin America in 2022, energizing and strengthening more than 1,000 municipal and 32 departmental ecosystems of social entrepreneurship.
“Few of these important advances would have occurred without Mariana’s and Camilo’s courage, dedication and focus,” de Lama said. “Their project exemplifies EF’s mission to create a world more peaceful, prosperous and just.”
Villamizar heads government affairs for Grupo Éxito, a giant retail department store and grocery chain with more than 2,600 stores in South America. Fonseca advised Colombia’s federal government on regulations related to small- and medium- sized companies. In 2014 he co-founded RECON as an online platform for peace initiatives and social innovation, traveling across the country each of the following two years and again in 2018 to consult with civil society groups and document their needs.
Their unique nonprofit was selected as this year’s winner of the EF Impact Award in a highly competitive field of 27 project submissions from around the world by a distinguished panel of Eisenhower Fellowships Trustees, Fellows, outside experts and senior staff.
The panel noted that the work of RECON is directly tied to Villamizar’s and Fonseca’s Eisenhower Fellowships programs and has produced wide-ranging impact across their nation in a number of vital areas. The panel also recognized that their work already has proven to be sustainable.
Fonseca and Villamizar will receive a $10,000 USD prize to support the work of RECON. EF Trustee Jim Hovey, longtime former vice chairman of the EF Board of Trustees and chairman of its Executive Committee, will present them the award at the 2024 Impact Award Dinner and Pin Ceremony for Fellows in EF’s Fall 2024 Women’s Leadership Program on November 6 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City.
You can read more about EF and its Fellows’ impact around the world on the website here.