The Fundación nu3, of Colombian origin and presided over by Paola Dávila-Pestana, was presented last Wednesday and took the first step to establish itself both in Spain and in Europe.
The objective of this Foundation is to address local challenges related to social integration, family well-being, and mental health. Its nu360 social innovation model, originally developed in Colombia, seeks to promote community development and the inclusion of vulnerable populations in the Spanish context.
After more than two decades of work in Colombia, the Fundación nu3 announces the international expansion of its nu360 model, a comprehensive transformation methodology that has accompanied the development of more than 188,000 people and will begin operations in Panama and Europe in 2026.
The CEO of nu3, Paola Dávila-Pestana, pointed out during her speech at the presentation that “tonight is not just an opening night for the foundation, but it is the demonstration that dreams also cross oceans. A few years ago, if someone had told me that an idea born in a neighborhood of Barranquilla would unite us here in Madrid today, I would probably have thought it was impossible. But life has taught me that the greatest things almost always start with a very simple conviction, refusing to accept that a person’s reality is defined by their place of birth.”
“Today I represent thousands of Colombian women, women who support their homes with immense strength, women who rise before the sun comes up, women who have talent, ability, intelligence, and the desire to move forward, but who often never find an opportunity. I was fortunate to find people who believed in me, and they are still waiting for someone to believe in them,” said Paola Dávila-Pestana.
The CEO of nu3 emphasized that when starting this adventure, “we really discovered that poverty never comes alone, that hunger comes along with it, that there is school dropout, that there is anxiety, that there is violence, and there is unemployment, and above all, unemployment with a lot of hopelessness. And we understood that it was indeed possible to change lives by solving not just part of it, but that we had to solve the whole problem. This made us ask a big question, and instead of intervening in problems, what if we start developing opportunities in each of these people? And thus the nu360 social innovation model was born, a model that comprehensively supports people from five dimensions: nutrition and food security, education, mental health, entrepreneurship, and employability.”
Paola Dávila-Pestana continued emphasizing that “a hungry child hardly learns, an emotionally broken mother can hardly support her family, and a community without economic opportunities can hardly break the cycle of poverty. That is why today and always we do not provide aid, we build capacities. When a person develops their capacities, a family changes. When a family changes, an entire community does. And when many communities change, a country changes. After 20 years, the results speak for themselves. We have impacted more than 188,000 people. We have delivered more than 2,000,000 food rations across the country. We have generated more than 20,000 workdays. We have created more than 12,000 jobs. And we have strengthened families and communities that today describe each one as starting a different story. But behind each figure, there is something much more important. There is a face, there is a name, and there is someone who stopped surviving to start living. And one thing we learned very early on. None of this would have been possible.
The CEO of nu3 highlighted that the best results of the Foundation were born “when the public sector, companies, social organizations, and communities decided to work as one team. Because social transformation never belongs to one organization, it belongs to everyone. That is why we are here today. Today we do not come to ask, we come to share a model that has demonstrated that it is indeed possible to break the cycle of poverty when we stop working in isolation and start building together. For a long time, social solutions traveled from north to south. Tonight we want to demonstrate that innovation can also travel the opposite way.”
Nu3 also presented the possibility of sponsoring a life in Colombia. Being a sponsor of a nu3 beneficiary means becoming a support, a guide, and, above all, a presence that accompanies with love and commitment through a minimal contribution. A sponsor provides support in the education and nutrition of the sponsored child; accompanies with education and values, strengthening their learning; sustains processes that change lives through opportunities, and receives updates on the evolution of the sponsored child. All information about the sponsorship process can be consulted at this link.
