Berkeley Student Program Honors 60-Year Colombia Legacy

When five men on horseback showed up at Maureen Orth's door in 1964, asking her to ride three miles up a Colombian mountain, she had no idea she was beginning a 60-year journey. The subsistence farmers in Aguas Frías wanted a school for their children, and the 21-year-old Peace Corps volunteer from Berkeley said yes.

Just over a year later, on December 8, 1965, the community dedicated Escuela Marina Orth. The school still stands today, a testament to what Orth calls her guiding principle: "You simply cannot take no for an answer."

Orth graduated from UC Berkeley in 1964 with a degree in political science. She left for Medellín just months later, assigned to a poor neighborhood with no hot water, five-inch cockroaches, and one payphone for 2,500 people.

"God does not discriminate when he gives out brains and talent and beauty," Orth said. "It is opportunity that is restricted."

That belief became the backbone of everything that followed. Orth went on to become an award-winning journalist, profiling everyone from Madonna to Vladimir Putin for Vanity Fair. She wrote Vulgar Favors, which became the Emmy-winning series The Assassination of Gianni Versace.

But Colombia was always calling her back. In 2005, she founded the Marina Orth Foundation, which now works with more than 17,000 students across 56 public schools in Colombia, teaching STEM, robotics, English, and leadership.

The Ripple Effect

Now those worlds have officially merged. The UC Berkeley School of Education has formalized the Marina Orth Foundation Scholars Program Endowment, sending two to four Berkeley undergraduates to Medellín each summer to work alongside MOF staff.

The program requires intermediate or advanced Spanish and a background in STEM or youth education. Students spend four weeks in real educational settings, developing as educators while gaining professional experience in a different cultural context.

"This program will place students in real educational settings in Colombia, where they can learn through practice," said Erin Murphy Graham, BSE Director of Undergraduate Programs. The partnership brings together the School of Education, MOF, and the Social Sciences Career Readiness Internship Program.

The pilot program launched in summer 2025, and the permanent endowment ensures it will continue for generations.

For Orth, now in her eighth decade, it's a long-awaited convergence of two passions. "I've always wanted to meld the two," she said of Berkeley and Colombia. "Now we have it, and I'm very, very happy."

From a single school built by weekend workdays and sheer persistence to an international foundation training robotic champions and computer engineers, Orth's journey proves that saying yes to one challenge can create opportunities for thousands.