• The XVI edition of the Young Latin American Leaders program is held from September 22 to October 5 in Madrid, Brussels and Santander. It is organized by the Carolina Foundation and Banco Santander.
• The Young Ibero-American Leaders program seeks to promote reflection, deliberation, and generate Ibero-American leadership networks by encouraging commitment to the values and principles that underpin the Ibero-American Community and its assumption of the 2030 Agenda as a collective horizon of global progress.
• 30 young people from 20 Latin American countries participate, along with important people from political, economic and social life.
   

The thirty participants in the XVI edition of the Young Ibero-American Leaders program attended the Zarzuela Palace today accompanied by the director of the Carolina Foundation, José Antonio Sanahuja; the global director of Santander Scholarships, Daniel Mitraud and the general secretary and manager of the Carolina Foundation, Hugo Camacho.

The Young Ibero-American Leaders program, organized by the Carolina Foundation, in collaboration with Santander Bank through Santander Universities, has been held annually since 2002. Each year, young Latin Americans participate -30 in this edition- with outstanding academic records, selected between candidates from all over Latin America. In its fifteen years of existence, more than 650 young people have gone through the program. For two weeks, participants will have the opportunity to meet with ministers and senior officials of the public administration and with executives of the main private entities of the country, on an agenda in which, in addition to Madrid, they will visit Brussels and Santander.

The agenda of the day will continue in the Santander Group Financial City where, in addition to a meeting with the president of Santander Universities, Matías Rodríguez Inciarte, they will attend several activities. In the afternoon, the young leaders will have a talk with union representatives: Bruno Estrada, attached to the General Secretariat of Workers Commissions (CCOO) and Jesús Gallego, Secretary of International Policy of the General Union of Workers (UGT).

Banco Santander and its commitment to Education

Banco Santander is the only European bank included in the ‘Change the World’ 2018 ranking of companies that are contributing to improve the world (Fortune magazine) for its positive impact on society, among other criteria. Its firm commitment to Higher Education, which materializes through Santander Universities, distinguished it as the company that invests most in Education in the world (Varkey Report / UNESCO / Fortune 500) and has become one of its hallmarks, with 1,200 collaboration agreements with universities and institutions in 21 countries, more than 1,700 million euros allocated to academic initiatives since 2002 and more than 73,000 scholarships and university grants granted in 2018.

Carolina Foundation

The Carolina Foundation was established in 2000 as an institution for the promotion of cultural relations and educational and scientific cooperation between Spain and the countries of the Ibero-American Community of Nations. Since its creation, it has allocated more than 16,500 scholarships and research grants to Latin American university students.

In addition to working towards the creation of an Ibero-American knowledge space, the Carolina Foundation is a public diplomacy tool whose objective is to achieve better mutual knowledge between Latin America and Spain. Likewise, it is a private public association, whose board of directors is both Spanish institutions of external action, and a group of private companies that have activity in Latin America