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He Seized Opportunities, and People with Disabilities Throughout Guatemala Will Benefit
At a book fair in Guatemala City in mid-2024, Athlete Leader Daniel Guerra was doing what he does well, telling the story of people with intellectual disabilities and the barriers they face.
Daniel was speaking as part of a project that produced a book telling the stories of five Special Olympics Guatemala athletes and challenges they had faced in school and in life.
Then he spotted the Minister of Education in the crowd. Daniel introduced himself, and said, “We have this problem, and I need to talk to you.”
He explained that he knew there was lack of training for educators to work with students with intellectual disabilities. That was a problem he faced as a student. He asked for help to solve the problem. “It blows my mind that he went up and did that,” says Kenia Padron, Manager for Leadership, Diversity and Inclusion at Special Olympics Latin America.
Daniel was prepared to lead independently. He has taken all of the Athlete Leadership courses. He attends weekly Athlete Leadership trainings. Those trainings have taught skills that Daniel uses in his role as the voice of other athletes. “Training gave me confidence, communication skills, decision-making abilities, and a better understanding of my rights; they taught me how to manage my time effectively and how to raise awareness of our rights as people with disabilities,” Daniel says.
“The Athlete Leadership trainings provide us with tools that highlight our rights as individuals and show that having a disability does not limit us.” At a separate event, Daniel approached the First Lady of Guatemala, Lucrecia Peinado, with the same directness and the same message. Impressed by his confidence and his empathy for his fellow athletes, she invited him to join roundtables on inclusion starting in 2025. He attends as an individual, not through his work with Special Olympics Guatemala.
Special Olympics Guatemala has a partnership with the Ministry of Education, and Daniel has led awareness sessions on inclusion and intellectual disabilities for the Ministry of Sports and Culture. With the help of training and his strong sense of commitment, Daniel has been building toward this for years.
Now, when he sees opportunity, he acts.
Building, Rebuilding and Strengthening Athlete Leadership Programs Throughout Latin America
Volunteers are the backbone of Special Olympics Athlete Leadership programs across Latin America. Some Programs have a long history with Athlete Leadership and volunteers with years of experience. But some Programs don’t have that depth, and Athlete Leadership initiatives can falter.
“There’s a lot of going in and out and changing people, so we constantly have to retrain,” says Kenia Padron, Manager for Leadership, Diversity, & Inclusion at Special Olympics Latin America.
Padron took that challenge on in 2025, developing two guides that Programs can use to launch and sustain Athlete Leadership programs. She visited several Programs in Latin America, too, stepping local leaders through the materials, answering questions and giving advice. And she made it clear she was available to answer questions.
The capacity-building project—including Padron’s position, the development of the guides, and the site visits.
One of the new guides walks coordinators through launching an Athlete Leadership program from scratch. The other is an academic planning guide that maps out a full year of trainings.
Sustaining Special Olympics programming can be challenging because tight budgets limit the ability to travel across large countries.
“Not all Programs have the money to do it in person,” Padron notes, so the planning guide is built for flexibility—sessions can be delivered in person, virtually, or in a hybrid format.
To help Programs cover larger areas, Padron led train-the-trainer sessions that get firsthand knowledge of the materials to places throughout the countries where the Programs operate. The guides are starting points for Program leaders, Padron says.
“You can read through this material, have a sense of what it looks like, and then come with specific questions,” Padron says. “And I can then help shape the Athlete Leadership programming to their needs and their realities.”
“You Must Be There” How Carlos Miro Sparked Growth in Athlete Leadership at Special Olympics Puerto Rico
Staff changes at Special Olympics Puerto Rico put Athlete Leadership programming on hold in 2024. An athlete leader and his mentor revitalized the program themselves, designing a recruitment process, interviewing athletes, handling concerns of families, and organizing a successful kickoff.
The team of Athlete Carlos Miro and mentor Armando Muñoz revitalized the Athlete Leadership program in Puerto Rico from the ground up and showed the power of Athlete Leadership itself.
Carlos had been an athlete leader in health before he took part in the Special Olympics Latin America Regional Athlete Congress in Paraguay in 2024. “I came back from Paraguay with a lot of hope,” Carlos says.
He returned to Puerto Rico with the Athlete Leadership curriculum and a strong desire to share it. He proposed setting up an Athlete Leadership program to his Program’s national director, who agreed it was a great idea. It took several months to explain the Program to his fellow athletes and to get them and their families comfortable with the idea.
“We were looking for athletes that had that desire and capability to deliver the message of inclusion, of being really involved,” Carlos says.
Carlos had learned the power of persistence, so he and Muñoz kept pushing and pushing. He finally simply scheduled an event and told interested athletes, “You must be there. Here’s the time. Here’s the place.”
That strategy worked. Now, the Athlete Leadership program in Puerto Rico is growing. Carlos and Armando are planning new trainings and activities.
“We want to grow the group of athlete leaders,” Carlos says. “There’s a lot of athletes with the potential to speak and bring the message of inclusion and having a healthy lifestyle.”
In October, athlete leaders received training to be Unified Leadership training facilitators, strengthening their presentation skills and the ability for Unified Leadership to reach companies in Latin America. athlete leaders from Puerto Rico also took on important roles during the Special Olympics Unified 3x3 Basketball World Cup in December. That event featured basketball players with and without intellectual disabilities playing on the same team.
One of the athletes brought in through Carlos’s work will represent Special Olympics Puerto Rico at the Regional Athlete Leadership Congress in Panama City in April 2026. Athlete Leader Armando Renta will join in discussions that will shape the future of Special Olympics for years to come.
It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t quick, but Carlos and his mentor, Armando, have established a strong foundation. “I’ve seen the capabilities and skills of other athletes and their desire to be included in society,” Carlos says. ”To me, this is my responsibility.”
