Ashoka Fellow Catalina Escobar, this week's CNN Hero, is a lifeline for teen mothers in Colombia
Long-time advocate for the health of young girls and women Catalina Escobar was recently recognized as a CNN Hero. Escobar works as a "community crusader" in Cartagena, one of Colombia's largest cities where one-third of residents live at or below the poverty line, and, to complicate matters even further, where one in five girls aged 15 to 19 are or have been pregnant.
"Girls tell me they don't understand how they got pregnant. They think it's from a kiss," Escobar said. "They don't know that the option of using condoms exists."
For more than a decade, this Ashoka Fellow and founder of the Juan Felipe Gómez Escobar Foundation—named after her 16-month-old son who passed away in a tragic accident—has been giving thousands of teen moms the tools to change their lives, empowering them with health care services, early childhood and reproductive health education and job training.
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