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President of the First Civil Society Council of the Ministry of Education, founder of the NGO Incidentes, former representative of the Chilean Government at UNESCO, and a 17-year-old student at the Liceo Multigénero Doctora Eloisa Díaz I: Angeline Morgado, of Venezuelan origin, is proof that effective inclusion highlights the contribution of migrant students to the Chilean educational system and society.

Five years ago, Angeline (17) moved to Santiago de Chile with her family from Venezuela. She is currently in her final year at the Liceo Multigénero Doctora Eloisa Díaz I, where she was class president and a member of the student center. Her vocation for public service has taken her further: today, she is the president of the Civil Society Council of the Ministry of Education (Mineduc), the first entirely composed of students. She is also a spokesperson for the NGO América Solidaria.

At just 15, Angeline founded an NGO dedicated to the comprehensive development of adolescents in Latin America, named Incidentes. In 2022, this NGO represented youth at the Advisory Forum of UNICEF's Work Plan in Chile. A year later, Incidentes had speakers at the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean for Sustainable Development.

In 2023, Angeline was a representative of the Chilean Government at the 13th UNESCO 91Â鶹¹ú²ú¾«Æ·×ÔÅÄ in France. However, her journey to represent Chilean and Latin American youth was not easy: she had problems finding a school and faced a slow adaptation process to the Chilean educational system, which was not free from discrimination.

It was tough and quite exhausting because, as a migrant, you have to do three times more than what a Chilean student would do, and not everyone is willing to help you or answer the questions you have. Sometimes, they don’t even look in your direction.

My mom and I had to walk all over our commune and Santiago, risking getting lost, to find the answers we needed. We had to search for schools on our own without fully understanding how the system in Chile worked. Similarly, explaining my educational background in Venezuela to the school authorities was complicated; we often felt they stopped listening at a point, or that we were inevitably headed for the waiting list.

Arriving in Chile in September, there was no way, or they didn't want to find a way, to integrate me until March, so for months I was isolated from Chilean education.

When I finally entered, I went to a school in Conchalí, where the first few days of adaptation were tough. If it is difficult for students to integrate just by spending two months on vacation, for me, coming from a different system and having been out of an educational establishment for seven months, it was an odyssey.

Many times migrant children go to school thinking about a lot of things, but less about having to learn. They think about their immigration status, their label as legal or illegal, because

when we look at irregular adult migrants, we forget that there are minors depending on them.

Children often think about their families and get lost in this current of worries that is very difficult for them to understand and that also overwhelms older students.

It is necessary to help them navigate this with support so that they can develop as students. Also, it is necessary to provide all the information possible to the families about the student life that the student will be subject to, this would alleviate the anxiety that students bring when facing an unknown establishment.

I have a self-imposed commitment to the youth of Chile as a youth activist for participation and influence in public policies. But in this specific initiative, I was motivated by the idea of being able to represent the experiences of migrant students because I thought about the impact this initiative would have had on the migrant student that I was when I arrived in the country and how much I needed representation.

I am very happy about the diversity of this council, because it allows us to address the problems we see in Chilean education in an intersectional way, and my contribution has to do with that.

This council, like all civil society councils, is a mechanism for citizen participation of an advisory nature. We, as student representatives, inform ourselves about what the Ministry of Education is doing and then suggest proposals about what we feel is important to highlight.

We must create spaces for participation and influence to the point where they become a general rule, that when thinking about spaces like COSOC, it is not the exception. Bring these participation opportunities closer to them, because it is useless to create them if we cannot bring these spaces closer to the young people.

We must actively remind them that, in participation spaces, the diversity they bring is key to addressing problems in a comprehensive way and how important it is to share their experiences. Encourage educational establishments, which are the first to be closer to migrant young people, to create leadership and participation instances that promote diversity and inclusion.

Don't be afraid to give your opinion. Your opinion is important and valid. You add a lot to student representation spaces, and don't believe anyone who tells you that you subtract or that you are taking away the space from someone who deserves it. You deserve it. And you are not taking away space from anyone, you are taking on a role that should always have existed in those spaces. I was afraid, but once I faced it, I became president of my class and then became a member of the student center in my first year, and I still am now that I am in my final year. So, yes, it is possible, try it, learn from your experiences, participate and influence because I believe in you and I know I am not the only one.