Santiago R: GIN GAP Team Bio


Bio

Hello, I’m Santiago Restrepo Londoño. Born in Medellín, Colombia on 06/08/2003. Currently I’m moving to Barranquilla and starting a new school year in Marymount school.

My interests include learning new languages, traveling and reading. I’m also very passionate about politics and sustainable development.

In 2017 I joined GIN through my 8th Grade Sociales teacher, ‘la Mona’. She introduced me to the team and the dynamics. This I was introduced to systems thinking and had a deeper dive into sustainable change.

During my next school year I remained in the same team and kept learning and working in making school trips sustainable. I also attended an International GIN Conference in which I presented my project. At the same conference I met many students from across the region.

During this last year I had the opportunity to work on two main GIN activities, one was the EmerGINcy Conference 2020 and a new team which focuses on preparing the future generation of GIN members at TCS. This was my favorite year of working in GIN because I learned the most and was able to apply a huge amount of knowledge.

At the EmerGINcy 2020 Conference I had the pleasure of participating as an organizar. Specifically as a Leader of the Budget, Sponsorship and Fundraising Committee. During this magnificent experience I got to grow my skills in diverse areas such as organization, leadership, interconnected teamworking, and budget building/execution. This skills have proven to be very useful for different activities and I know consider them to be life long skills.

GIN is Learning Leadership Amazing

My last GIN Project had the purpose of setting up GIN Teams from Middle School so they would be ready to participate from an earlier age. This project is one I will cherish in my mind for a very long time. Even though my purpose was to prepare and teach others I felt that I was the one who learned the most from this experience. By teaching others about systems thinking, sustainable development, and team building I ended up reinforcing those concepts and achieving a deeper understanding of them.