Escuela Marina Orth began in the sixties when Peace Corps volunteer, Maureen Orth was asked by the people of the rural community of Aguas Frias, in the Andes mountains above Medellin, to help them build a school. With a donation of building materials from the National Federation of Coffee Growers, the people carved a site out of the side of the mountain and together with Marina built their first school. Escuela Marina Orth began with two classrooms and 35 students. Today it is a fully equipped primary and secondary school with 350 students from pre kindergarten through high school. In 2004, Dr. Horacio Arango, Secretary of Education of Medellin, asked Maureen Orth to help make the school named for her the first public bilingual school in Medellin. In 2005, she hired Luis Fernando Sanchez to be Executive Director of the Marina Orth Foundation, which was formally incorporated in 2006. He had previously taught at INSA (Institute of Our Lady of the Assumption) in Cali, an innovative school begun by Basilian missionary fathers for underprivileged students that now rivals the best private schools in that city. Since the formal incorporation of two non-profit foundations, Marina Orth Foundation in the United States and Fundacion Marina Orth in Colombia, the foundation has dedicated itself to creating a model public school to eventually be replicated elsewhere so that primary and secondary students in Colombia and elsewhere, no matter their race, gender or economic background, can compete globally and make a positive contribution to the world.