Abelardo de la Espriella Helps Secure Private Funding for Colombia’s Robotics Team
Colombia’s robotics team will travel to Japan to compete at the RoboRave World Championship after private funding rescued a trip that appeared financially impossible just weeks earlier. The delegation of 15 students from Neiva, Barranquilla, Santa Marta, and Envigado captured national attention after posting a video on social media asking President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella for help, explaining that they had exhausted every fundraising effort available without securing enough money to represent the country.
Their appeal highlighted a broader challenge facing many young Colombian science teams, which often rely on donations and community fundraising rather than consistent institutional support to participate in international competitions.
Why Colombia’s robotics team needed private support
The video’s power came from the specific history these kids laid out, since the team explained that Colombia’s economic support “has been null,” forcing them to organize their own fundraising activities just to attend three of the last four editions of the competition. That scrappy persistence still hit a wall in Australia, where the country ended up with no representation at all simply because the money never came together in time, a gap that meant Colombia’s young roboticists watched from home while other nations competed.
Facing the same uncertainty ahead of this year’s edition in Osaka, set to begin Aug. 11, the coaches and children decided their only remaining option was appealing directly to the incoming President, closing their message with a simple line that captured the frustration behind months of unanswered requests: “President, we already did our part, please help us represent Colombia in Japan”.
De la Espriella delivers where the state didn’t
De la Espriella responded on July 17 through a video posted to his X account, revealing to the children and their parents that a businessman had agreed to cover every expense of their trip to Asia. He framed the moment as proof of a broader philosophy he plans to bring into his Government, describing it as “the revolution of small things,” a phrase he used to argue that believing in children and opening real opportunities for them matters just as much as any large policy announcement.
In his own words, delivered directly to the team, “as you can see, your video reached me, so I told my team, we have to solve this for them,” a moment that let him hand the families concrete news instead of another vague promise.
Private partnerships become key for Colombian STEM talent
Beyond the immediate relief for these 15 children, De la Espriella used the moment to preview how he intends to govern once he takes office, stating plainly that his administration “won’t be able to fund everything with state money,” but that resolving specific problems often comes down to management and creativity rather than budget size alone.
He committed to pushing “clear policies to support talent, science, technology, and innovation” once in power, arguing that partnerships between the Government and private companies represent the fastest way to help Colombian children develop their potential and carry the country’s name further abroad.
That message doubles as a warning about how Colombia has handled youth science programs until now, since a national robotics team needing a viral video and a personal appeal to the President-elect just to reach a world championship exposes exactly how thin institutional support for young talent has remained, even as De la Espriella insists that pairing Government leadership with private generosity, rather than public funding alone, will define how his Government responds to similar requests going forward.
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