María Gabriela Arenas

Board Member

Gaby Arenas is breaking the patterns of violence at home, school, and in communities throughout Colombia. Through the TAAP Foundation, she manages to promote peaceful coexistence, generate projects for social development, and ventures that increase the welfare of communities. Gaby uses play, imagination, and art as tools to develop critical thinking and understanding that changes how individuals see and respond to their environments.

Gaby grew up in a family of researchers and professors, from whom she gained a passion for discovery, but also social consciousness. Raised on the patios of her parents’ universities, she was taught to question and learn continuously. She especially enjoyed time in her father’s lab, using his microscope. A family tradition at Christmas was to give presents to others, a philosophy of showing thanks by giving.

Gaby studied in a community school, in an open classroom model. The students were expected to contribute to the village community, and coexist with them considerately. Her experience there showed that it is important to respect what each community and individual has to offer, along with its social and cultural dynamics and learnings. As a young adult, she taught music and theater classes to children whose mothers were incarcerated, and she taught reading to both children and older adults.

At university, Gaby studied social communication. There, she became involved in a theater group as producer and actress. Gaby’s professor asked her students to give community theater workshops in low income areas. There, Gaby began to learn the basics of community development work and was exposed to social entrepreneurship, seeing the difference it makes to go beyond assistance to ennabling communities to solve their own problems