When Carlos Aparicio was five years old, his family fled the violence that was raging around their home in the Colombian countryside and settled in Bogota. They had no money. Carlos' father built a makeshift house out of paper and wood for his wife and six children.
It was very cold, and Carlos succumbed to chronic bronchitis. He credits the doctors at Plan's medical centre in those early years for the medals and trophy he's won running marathons as an adult.
Carlos says when his mother first took him to the centre, the doctors feared he'd never be able even to walk briskly. He sticks to his daily training routine because he remembers that without the intervention of the doctors, running at all would be out of the question.
Carlos was a sponsored child through Plan for 13 years. His sponsor was Louise Miller, a retired maths teacher. When he finished school at age 16 with exemplary marks, his family told him that now he must go to work to help his brothers.
Louise in her letters encouraged him to find a way to continue his education, and Magdalena Guzmàn of Plan Colombia helped him figure out how to meet both goals. He continued to work and study, eventually financing his university education in part by serving as a translator for Plan.
When asked about what the sponsorship relationship meant to him, Carlos explained: "When I was very young I was living a hard life, but Miss Louise Miller was showing me a different world and helped me to dream – to dream of a better life for me, a better life for my family, a better life for my society. Children need to have dreams."
Carlos got his Public Accountant certification and went on to do an MBA at Los Andes University. He married his high school sweetheart, Nina, another Plan-sponsored child, who now works as a consultant on education. Their son Christian is at university studying Systems Engineering and their daughter Laura is in sixth grade.
Carlos works for an international organisation that helps universities organise their financial aid programs, so that children who cannot afford post-secondary studies are given opportunities to do so. "I love to give motivational lectures for students who usually do not dream about going to universities," he says.