One Year of TASK™ in Spanish: A Growing Community Sharing Good Practices

Evelyne GROSS, International Accreditations and Sustainability Expert & Sulitest Ambassador for LATAM. Dr Fabrice GALIA, Researcher in Innovation and Organization & Sulitest Ambassador for LATAM

One year ago, we launched the TASK™ pilot in Spanish, with the ambition of opening our community to higher education institutions across Latin America and Spain.

Latin America faces numerous political, social and environmental challenges. Access to water, electricity and education, inequalities, the exploitation of natural resources and deforestation: these challenges are numerous and closely linked to the realities of local territories.

But Latin America is also at the heart of many solutions. Its exceptional biodiversity, the resilience of its territories and the dynamism of its initiatives demonstrate a strong commitment to addressing sustainable development challenges.

In this context, higher education institutions play an essential role: educating students and equipping them with the knowledge and skills they need to understand these challenges and, ultimately, take meaningful action in their own territories. For some institutions in the region, this commitment has been a priority for more than 20 years.

This is the momentum we witnessed throughout the TASK™ pilot in Spanish. Institutions from Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela took part in the initiative. In total, 29 institutions and nearly 4,000 students participated in the pilot, supported in particular by the strong commitment of teaching teams and educators.

A special mention goes to CETYS University in Mexico and Simón Bolívar University in Colombia, each of which engaged more than 1,000 students!

This strong mobilisation marked an important milestone: in February 2026, TASK™ in Spanish was officially launched. Since then, the community has continued to grow, welcoming new institutions, including Universidad del Pacífico in Peru, Universidad Simón Bolívar and Universidad Autónoma de Occidente (UAO) in Colombia, UTEC in Uruguay, and Universidad Panamericana in Mexico.

A Community That Learns and Shares

Joining TASK™ also means becoming part of a community of institutions that share their experiences, practices and insights on integrating sustainability into educational programmes.

We had the opportunity to highlight good practices from two institutions involved in the pilot, Universidad ESAN in Peru and CETYS Universidad in Mexico, during the V Encuentro de la Red Latinoamericana de Sostenibilidad y Responsabilidad Social, organised by CLADEA.

This momentum will continue at the upcoming AACSB Latin America and Caribbean Summit in Montevideo, where we look forward to exchanging ideas with our colleagues from Universidad Externado de Colombia, Universidad ESAN in Peru and Universidad Ana G. Méndez (UAGM) in Puerto Rico.

At the heart of these discussions lies an essential question: how can assessment transform sustainability from a simple objective into a commitment that is genuinely embedded in educational programmes?

From Awareness to Integration into Educational Programmes

After a year of exchanges with our partner institutions across Latin America, one thing is clear: there is a genuine commitment to integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into educational programmes, alongside a growing determination to connect these goals with the realities and needs of local territories.

There is, of course, still progress to be made. However, we are convinced that higher education institutions across Latin America have many valuable practices and innovations to share with the entire TASK™ community.

This is also what makes TASK™ so meaningful: providing institutions with a common framework to assess and develop sustainability-related knowledge and skills, while helping them identify ways to better integrate these issues into educational programmes.

The launch of TASK™ in Spanish therefore responds to a real need: enabling more institutions and students to engage with these issues in their own language, while facilitating the exchange of experiences between institutions operating in different contexts.

This exchange works both ways. The initiatives and innovations developed by higher education institutions across Latin America are also a valuable source of learning for the wider international TASK™ community.

Following this particularly enriching first year, we look forward to continuing this momentum, learning alongside our partners and co-creating with higher education institutions across Latin America at the upcoming events we will be attending:

15.º Encuentro PRME Latinoamérica y el Caribe 2026, 22–23 October 2026, Montevideo, Uruguay.

61st CLADEA International Congress 2026, 26–27-28 October 2026, Montevideo, Uruguay.

AACSB Latin America and Caribbean Summit, 28–29 October 2026, Montevideo, Uruguay.

We look forward to connecting, learning from one another and continuing to co-create together!