Latin America Leadership Program

Lorena Gómez, GCL 2019 alumna from Colombia and founder of IN-Spire, met Dalai Lama at his temple in Dharamshala (India) right before the pandemic started. In recognition of her work as an ecotourism leader enhancing cross-cultural dialogue and reconciliation with nature through travel and storytelling, Lorena was invited by the United States Institute of Peace to meet the Tibetan Nobel Peace Prize. The exchange brought together the 24 most effective youth peace-builders from the most conflicted areas of the world (Venezuela, Syria, South Sudan, and Afghanistan among others) to strengthen their personal and community resilience.

Moved by Dalai Lama’s teachings on how inner peace creates the conditions for outer peace, Lorena is using multiple formats to convey what to her is a game-changing message for Colombia and the Western world:

I reaffirmed the importance of holding on to my inner discernment, remembering that ‘nothing exists as it appears. Whether it’s Latin Americans, Americans or anyone else, we must all understand that all lives are worth the same. We should embrace our differences as reasons to learn from each other. Affirming ‘you and I are the same human being’, His Holiness invited us to be a Dalai Lama in each of our countries.