Diana is a lawyer from Colombia who is working to maintain peace there. In addition, she is not only one of the first talents of the SBW Berlin scholarship program, but also its first graduate. Diana, like the other scholarship holders who took part in the program after her, was already very socially committed in her home country. In Colombia and during her work for transitional justice ((justicia transicional), she became increasingly interested in dealing with the armed conflict and soon realized that a large part of the Colombian population knew little about the conflicts or was relying on false information. Diana decided to change this and wanted to contribute to peace in her home country.

From then on, this formed the basis of her social project and was her motivation for closing the existing gaps in knowledge about the conflicts in the country and providing a wider audience with more detailed information. Diana remembers the beginnings of her project: PAZALO.co or justiciaypaz.co started as an idea to contribute to improving a deficit that I noticed more than 9 years ago through my work experience. Then it became the project that opened the doors for me to become a scholarship holder at SBW Berlin in Germany and do my master’s degree at Humboldt University, and now it’s an academic project that I continue to work on (in Colombia).”

However, it was not always easy. In fact, Diana faced a number of challenges, especially while living and studying in Berlin. On the one hand, the language was foreign and difficult, but she still tried to learn it. On the other hand, she was very surprised at how independently students worked at German universities and how much emphasis was placed on independent learning and working through the lectures attended. But she says, rightly with some pride: “On a personal level, I could say that my experience in Germany has taught me to develop skills or abilities that I didn’t know I had. Self-confidence, resilience, time management, goal achievement, leadership and the ability to believe in my dreams.” All of this would soon come in handy on her career path.

The LL.M. (Masters of Laws) in German and European Law together with an internship in a law firm had, according to Diana, a very positive influence on her professional career. Not only was she able to expand her knowledge as a lawyer, she was also able to learn about the case law of the German courts in certain areas of interest to her. Thanks to this experience, she became interested in further research on this topic, particularly in comparative law between Germany and Colombia. She also emphasizes that the implementation of her social project “PAZALO.co” has, in a way, forced her to keep researching in order to learn from comparable experiences in other countries that had developed approaches similar to “PAZALO.co” in a context similar to Colombia.

Diana has been living in Colombia again since 2021. According to her, the return to her everyday activities (work, private life and, initially, the project itself) was a gradual process. She points out: “When you return to your country of origin, you initially want stability, at least that’s how I felt, and that takes time. But little by little you get there.” However, she was lucky enough to start a job shortly after her return and has been working at the court ever since. In her free time, she continues to work on the development of her social project. With the help of new visions and perspectives that she had in Colombia, she also kept learning about new areas, such as artificial intelligence. She tries to integrate these into her work on the project and apply them there.

Diana says of her time in Germany and its impact: “It was also very useful to have been in Germany to advance the project, because here [in Kolumbien] I met a community of people who have studied in Germany and with whom I was able to exchange some ideas.” Her current plans are to finalize the prototype of the interactive project website soon. Furthermore, she is always looking for allies for the project and hopes to share it with an even wider (academic and non-academic) audience.

We are delighted with the various experiences Diana has been able to gain so far and are very excited to see what she will achieve in the future.