15 years transforming education: Carlos Cavelier's commitment from Alquería

His position is "dream coordinator," the visible head of Alquería, one of the best-known companies in the food sector, founded in 1959. His name is Carlos Enrique Cavelier, originally trained in sociology and anthropology, but with extensive experience in the university of life.

His career has included not only the management of the family company but also various positions and responsibilities in the public sector, including work in the Ministries of Agriculture and Justice, as well as being elected as a deputy to the Cundinamarca Assembly and representative to the Chamber of Deputies. He currently devotes a significant portion of his time to the Alquería Cavelier Foundation, which focuses on education. He spoke with EL TIEMPO about this topic.

Complex, of course. But in these times of such confusion, it's worth remembering Churchill 's phrase, which said something like, "There is no battle lost nor won; the important thing is to maintain the ability to keep fighting." So we keep moving forward. And we must be optimistic: we haven't stopped a single investment.

Things have gone quite well for us, and I think we're out of the hole. The 2021 strike hit us particularly hard, and I'm referring not only to Alquería but to the sector in general. During those weeks when we couldn't harvest our produce, farms were affected, cows dried up, and the country's milk production fell by 8 percent. When things normalized, a shortage hit, and prices rose 60 percent, which affected demand. For some time now, we've been approaching a new equilibrium. Furthermore, we are now a company that produces much more than milk; we have become a food company.

I've always been mindful of the topic because I see the change it brings about in people. It's also something that runs in the family, seeing the efforts of grandparents to educate themselves, their parents, and, of course, the next generation. But it's also a result of personal experiences. When my father installed the pasteurizer on his farm in Cajicá (Cundinamarca), he requested permission to open a public school to educate the workers' children. That was more than 60 years ago. I saw firsthand what learning achieved in children who were my playmates. In 2002, I joined Nicanor Restrepo's Entrepreneurs for Education initiative; that's when we began our journey to understand the complexities of the education system.

Finally, in 2010, we created the Alquería Cavelier Foundation. This coincided with Andrés González's administration in Cundinamarca, where he appointed me as a senior advisor for education, although I claimed to be a highly experienced student in the field. Thanks to this connection, I received support from the Ministry of Education, and we wrote to the school principals in the department asking them to recommend their most outstanding senior students.

With about 20 of them, we held summer camps to strengthen their knowledge. This allowed us to prepare them to teach remedial courses every two weeks in the provincial capitals of seven provinces, and then we awarded them scholarships to enter university. We've continued this way, and to date we have 520 scholarship recipients and 230 graduates. This program is called "Exceptional Talents," a term that reflects the reality.

They've all moved on with their lives, and there are some notable cases. I'll mention just a few. One of the young men studied computer science, earned a scholarship, went to the United States, and now has a very good position at Amazon. Another completed two degrees, a master's degree, and now works at American Airlines in Dallas. Another earned a doctorate in optical physics and lives in France.

We've learned a lot along the way, and I believe we choose those we support wisely. In fact, the average score for that group—currently composed of 38 students—on the 2024 state tests was 383. If we were an educational institution, we would be the best public school in Colombia. At the same time, we created an academic excellence fund for the children of our employees, so they can achieve better results on the Saber 11 tests and access quality higher education. We also have a program called "Ambassadors Without Borders," which allows students from Chía, Cajicá, Tabio, and Tocancipá to complete high school at some of the best schools in Bogotá.

The opportunity is there. But the challenge is to make it massive, as has happened in Alquería, where we aren't content with selling to 4,000 shopkeepers in Bogotá, as was the case a few decades ago. Now we distribute our products to 200,000 locations and are present throughout the country. Back to the topic of education, I went to speak with the recently elected mayor of Cajicá to ask him to let us work with the Municipal Education Secretariat.

In six years, we went from having one school in category A, one in B, two in C, and one in D, to now having all of them classified as A, including two and a half more in A. Thanks to that, we have the municipality with the best public education system in the country. That was the first step in what is now our program to improve educational quality.

Not at all. Then the governor's office became interested, and by 2023, we were already in 83 schools in 30 municipalities in Cundinamarca. Today, that number is 200 schools in 93 of the department's 116 municipalities, thanks to Governor Jorge Rey for his support. To summarize our achievements, we surpassed Bogotá in the tests and are not far behind Quindío, which is in first place nationally.

We have eight coordinators working with 400 people across these 200 educational institutions. Their main task is to review the most critical subjects, which are those related to science, mathematics, and literacy. It's a collaborative effort in which principals and teachers play key roles.

By 2035, Cundinamarca will be the Latin American region with the highest quality public education at the high school level, as measured by the PISA tests.

It's not so much a question of resources, but of expanding the commitment to schools, but money is always lacking. Ultimately, it's about empowering those in public schools so their students achieve excellence. Since we've already done this, I see it as entirely possible.

We're working on it. I've had meetings with the education secretaries of Santander and Antioquia, to name a couple of cases, and we're already making progress. I think we'll be in about five departments in a few months, but we'll do it slowly and carefully because these are long-term processes. You start with three or four high-potential institutions per department and work your way up.

In training principals to become transformative leaders and, at the same time, supporting teachers so they too develop new pedagogical skills. So, what we seek is a cultural shift so that the school in question understands that the problems they face are not insurmountable and that they see not just difficulties but the thousands of opportunities these children offer. We also assist with planning with the support of the Nutresa Foundation; and we hope to continue working with them in the future.

First, on a personal level, with an increase in trust between principals, school administrators, and teachers. Most understand the positive impact of working in a caring environment where problems can be resolved. And what we do is appeal to everyone's calling to teach better. We have found many valuable, dedicated people in this group of educators. The training model has impacted 7,475 teachers who teach more than 146,000 students in Cundinamarca schools.

Many. I have the example of a rector, a very ideological, hard-line leader, who initially said he was going to join the program to prove it didn't work, because he thought there was a business here and we came with the idea of ​​privatizing education. Now he's one of our main promoters.

I have no doubt that if you want to build a developed country, you need public education with extraordinary quality. That doesn't contradict having good private schools, because one can't be an obstacle to the other.

There is indeed a problem with capacity in higher education, starting with technical programs. The University of the Andes has been working on the idea of ​​a technological institute that offers shorter programs with good coverage and quality. Javeriana has just launched another. This is very positive news for an alternative area of ​​education in need of high quality and access for hundreds of thousands of young people who currently lack opportunities.

It's a shame that something so important has become so politicized. The important thing is how we improve the quality of employment and reduce informality. I've always thought that increasing internships in companies is very valuable. I hope Congress assumes its due responsibility and passes an excellent reform. That's the way to prevent this from becoming a tool for electoral gain.

Staying at the extremes. I dislike the far right's lack of empathy toward the poor, nor the belief that private sector activity is to blame for our ills and nationalizing everything is the solution. That's why we're so committed to public education. It's about ensuring people don't let themselves be fooled and understand that there is a happy medium that would allow us to progress collectively.