By Carol Kerbaugh
The proud son of a “shoeshine boy and girl adopted from the streets,” David Riveros García MPA 2025 believes access to education comes with a responsibility to serve his community.
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After leading a month-long demonstration against corruption in one of the largest public high schools in Paraguay, David Riveros García MPA 2025 founded reAcción Paraguay, a nonprofit organization that integrates civic education, technology, and social mobilization to hold government accountable. He has led the organization for the past 15 years, focused on ensuring that public investment in school infrastructure and meals reach the neediest schools in Paraguay.
The organization led the reform of the national policy on procurement for the education sector, facilitating coordination between high-level authorities in the Ministry of Education and the National Procurement Agency in Paraguay. The reAcción app, Foco (“lightbulb” in Spanish), has become the de facto public interface for the transparency of Paraguay’s historical investments in education infrastructure and school meals.
“There was a lack of effective monitoring to ensure resources actually reached the prioritized schools, despite the fact that there is an ever-increasing amount of data making that possible. That’s where our work comes in,” Riveros García explains. “We developed technology that complements our grassroots monitoring mechanism. Over a three-year period, our work contributed to a five-fold increase in the correct allocation of funds in the richest city of Paraguay, so more of the neediest schools receive the resources they are entitled to.”
“I really want our experience at reAcción to become an inspiration and a role model for a different way of doing international development work that is closer to communities and less dependent on international donors.”
After founding reAcción as a teenager, Riveros García earned a full scholarship to attend Morningside University in Iowa and later obtained a master’s degree in development studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was a Chevening Scholar. What drew Riveros García to Harvard Kennedy School was the practical nature of the Master in Public Administration (MPA) Program.
“I’m a practitioner—I’ve been working with people on policy issues, mobilizing collective action, and engaging different actors since I was 17 years old. I had no idea about the challenges involved in managing people, recruiting and training them, and dealing with the internal politics of an organization and with the external ecosystem,” he says. “The MPA Program focuses on building those leadership and management skills.”
Riveros García says this expertise would have been invaluable earlier in his career.
“I would have developed skills in negotiation and leadership in different ways that would have been more strategic and cost effective,” he says. “Maybe we would be in a better political and strategic position to drive change in ways that are beneficial for society.”
Riveros García has taken courses at HKS focused on those topics and more, including social entrepreneurship, international development, and a finance course, API-141: Finance with Professor Akash Deep.
“I’ve never done so badly in class,” he admits smiling. “But the amount of learning was outstanding. I’ve never been so intellectually motivated to learn more. If you’re here just to take classes you know a lot about already, then you’re not really pushing yourself to explore the uncomfortable voids that you might have inside—and that might make you a better professional and practitioner as well.”
Outside of the classroom, Riveros García is a Gleitsman Leadership Fellow and a Cheng Fellow, a first for a Paraguayan.
“As the proud Paraguayan son of a shoeshine boy and girl adopted from the streets, I am incredibly grateful to receive these fellowships,” he says. He has appreciated the opportunity to reflect with his Gleitsman Fellowship cohort.
“Spending time with people who have worked in different areas of social activism—and taking a moment to step back and recharge and think about the future after HKS has been unique,” he reflects. “It’s nice when you can have deep conversations with other people who have given so much of themselves to various causes.”
With his Cheng Fellow cohort, the cross-pollination of ideas in group discussions has been enlightening.
“I focus on anti-corruption and international development with civic tech, and I’m listening to someone presenting on sustainable energy and new software for batteries that could save up to 30 percent in energy consumption,” he says. “These may seem unrelated, but then you realize their way of optimizing things could be applied to certain processes you have.”
Looking ahead, Riveros García hopes to scale the work of reAcción to other cities and countries, integrating grassroots efforts with technology in ways that facilitate meaningful civic participation.
“We have a unique hybrid approach that other communities, not only in Paraguay but abroad, could learn from and adopt,” he explains. “I really want our experience at reAcción to become an inspiration and a role model for a different way of doing international development work that is closer to communities and less dependent on international donors.”
Riveros García remains clear on one thing: public service is his calling.
“If we have the privilege of accessing this level of education and meeting brilliant people, then we have a duty and responsibility—not an option—to serve others,” he says. “Knowledge can create better livelihoods and brighter horizons for people who today cannot even believe their lives will ever improve. My path is to be useful to people who have been excluded and underprivileged for their whole lives, like my family was when we were growing up.”
Photos courtesy of David Riveros García
