There are dreams that are born with the humility of an intuition and yet end up taking flight beyond what anyone would have imagined. This is how the Ismael Cala Foundation was born ten years ago: not as a great philanthropic project, but as an intimate act of gratitude. A genuine desire to give back, to multiply what has been received, to transform personal experience into a collective force capable of opening paths where before there was only resignation.
Over the years I understood that self-realization is just one station of the journey. The true turning point occurs when what we have achieved stops revolving around our name and begins to become a legacy. And the legacy is born when we put our gifts at the service of others, not as a gesture of charity, but as an act of conscience: abundance that is not shared stagnates.
Today, looking back, I see figures that tell stories. More than 5,000 young people from six countries—Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and the United States—have participated in processes of inner transformation, learning something that the traditional educational system often forgets: that self-esteem can also be trained, that emotional intelligence can save destinies and that leadership begins with the dignity of looking into each other’s eyes without fear.
The Kite Flight program has become the heart of this mission. It’s not just a workshop; It is a language of possibilities. There, young people practice listening, mutual recognition, fear management, the word that heals and the power of naming their dreams out loud. And the most beautiful thing is that this message no longer needs to depend on me: 261 facilitators trained in these ten years continue to carry the thread of this kite to new communities, demonstrating that service is the highest form of expansion.
Because when a young person discovers that he is not condemned to repeat a history of silence, something in the social fabric is rearranged. And when a facilitator becomes a beacon for others, a simple and powerful truth is confirmed: no one is impoverished by teaching how to fly.
And for those who feel that it is time to celebrate not what one achieves, but what is achieved in community, there is a space where that legacy is honored with presence, art and shared gratitude. A place to look at the sky and remember why we keep flying: I leave you a very special invitation here.
The Foundation is not a destination. It is a permanent starting point. A reminder that true abundance is not measured by what we accumulate, but by the lives that rise alongside ours.
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