Breaking Borders - Social Impact Graffiti Tour

Description

Check out this reportage from Travel Life Experiences: amazing video report from Travel Life Experiences about the Breaking Borders Project.

Learn about the impressive history of a group of locals from the Egipto neighborhood in Bogotá. Deciding to leave their criminal past behind they have started the initiative Breaking Borders, showing tourists around their streets filled with artwork that tells the neighborhood’s history. In this way, tourism has formed a real alternative for their personal and professional development and opened the doors to generate a connection between the change and transformative narratives with a resilient and welcoming society. .

You will start by meeting your Impulse Travel guide in El Chorro Quevedo, the founding place of Bogotá, There you will learn about the project while drinking a coffee or agua panela before heading to Nuestra Señora de Egipto, the church located at the entrance of Barrio Egipto, where the local leaders of Breaking Borders will be waiting for you.

Start going up the Calle Real or Royal Street, once the people’s only connection to the city, leading you deeper into the neighborhood. Your guide will then stop with you at El Cuadrado, a central point in the history of gang fights in the area. While in the past this place was a strategic point for control over the territory for the gangs, today it is painted with pictures that tell you about the history and new values of the people.

Walking uphill through the colorful stone streets of the neighborhood, you will notice first-hand how much the area has changed and transformed into a place of hope, peace, and culture. With mimics and cultural expressions, your local guide will illustrate how things used to work out in the "barrio" back in the days understanding the hidden messages and stories behind many of the murals and street art of Barrio Egipto, making it much more than a Bogota Graffiti Tour..

You will then reach the hills where the modest houses of the local guides and their families are bedded into the steep hills overlooking the vast metropolis down below. Despite the challenging conditions in the neighborhood, the warmth and determination of its people breathe life and joy into the community, inspiring their children to pursue their dreams with passion and resilience. Where many once turned to violence and vengeance, now there is hope, as the new generation fights for a brighter future.

At the end of the tour, you will pass by the Buena Semilla Foundation, a Christian value organization aiming to support women and children through their textile, wood and music workshops. If you would like to enter the foundation and experience this "oasis in the middle of the desert" firsthand please check out our add-ons!

This experience breaks borders beyond reality with the purpose of connecting us as humans, allowing us to put ourselves in the other's shoes and understand without judging other points of view, to help people move beyond the difficult decisions they made in the past, as they take responsibility and adopt actions and ideologies to ensure that such suffering never happens again.