The Girls are the Curriculum
We serve community, not ego.
At La Chispa, we don’t arrive with a savior mindset or impose imported models. We’re here to serve as requested, not as we see fit. The young women of Havana have told us what they need: practical skills, access to resources, and networks of support. So we’re listening. We’re responding. We’re building alongside them—not above them. We aren’t starting with textbooks, lectures, or top-down expertise. We’re starting with love, understanding, lived experience, and cultural belonging.
La Chispa is built on three central pillars, with a fourth that culminates the experience—all designed to nurture the girls in the ways they’ve asked to grow:
Pillar 1: Coaching, Mentorship, & Workshops
Pillar 2: Fan the Flame
Pillar 3: Reinvestment in the Cuban Economy
Pillar 4: Presentation of Business & Culmination Fair
We’ve rejected one-size-fits-all programming in favor of a community-rooted, one-on-one model. Each participant is matched with a local coach or mentor- someone thriving in her trade, who helps expand her skillset, confidence, and connections. Through cohort workshops and community-based intensives, we’re building not just capacity, but camaraderie—a sisterhood that extends beyond the program’s end. We learn each girl personally: her circumstances, strengths, and blind spots. Then, together, we co-create a plan that nurtures her long-term sustainability and compliments her spirit, not competes with it.
All of it, every session, every circle, every connection, is done through love, community, and radical belonging.
The product isn’t just a certificate.
The product is what happens when our girls realize they have access to more.
Global data shows that programs designed with young women, not just for them, are more sustainable, more transformative, and more likely to ripple outward. We believe that. And we’ve already seen it. The spark in her eye when she says she wants to open her own salon. The way she straightens up when we call her “leader.” The sacred hush that falls when one girl shares her truth—and the others truly listen. These aren’t soft outcomes. These are signals. These are metrics of change.