For Jairo Andrés Cortés Torres and Mauricio Alexander Yandar Paz from Colombia, this WUDC is the first English language tournament. Thanks to the scholarship program, they were able to represent the Universidad Cooperative de Clombia.

Jairo Andrés Cortés Torres and Mauricio Alexander Yandar Paz from Colombia.

Achte Minute: Jairo, Mauricio, how are you doing here at the WUDC in Berlin?
Jairo: For us, this is our first English competition, so debating can be very hard sometimes. But we like it a lot and we are full of new ideas now! Maybe now we will be able to organize national championships at home. Previously, we have had to import speakers from other Latin American countries in order to organize our tournaments.
Now, we have 6 debating societies in Colombian universities and it might be possible to organize a Colombian tournament.

Achte Minute: How do you organize training at home?
Jairo: Well, all our debating and our debating society depend on volunteers. This means we meet once a month for an internal competition. Beyond that, we cannot organize any training at the moment.
Mauricio: But we have debated as a team for more than three years now. We have already been to tournaments like the Campeonato Mundial Universitario de Debate en Español, which is the world debating championship in Spanish. So we have had training.

Achte Minute: What did the acceptance in the scholarship program mean to you?
Jairo: For us, it was the fulfillment of a dream. Coming to this championship is such a great experience. We also like Berlin very much, the architecture and the culture. There is so much to do and see here in the city and all the people are so good to us.