Iyolosiwa, Popular Education

Background

The Popular Education is a learning concept that focuses mainly on marginalised people (unemployed, indigenous, peasants, etc.) and their learning process. It enhances their learning through experiences, practices and reasoning in/on their local environment. Popular Education has had a long tradition in Latin America since the end of XX and one of its founder is Paolo Freir.

The Iyolosiwa Sacred Heart association (meaning, Heart of a women in Mexican indigenous nàhuatl language), through popular education, aims to facilitate to people, groups, communities and associations a critical and transforming perspective of reality. Their activities are run in four different zones: Leon (lower zone); Cuanala Puebla (East);  San Luis Potosi (central zone); Ayutla de los Libres (South zone).

Objectives

I. Community leadership

To promote community in its different perspectives by favouring the strengthen of popular organisation and its self-management through the elaboration of projects and/or proposals of sustainable development as well as civil society issues.

II. Solidarity economy

To create alternatives that improve the economy of impoverished families and communities by advising interested groups and/or collectivities in generating productive projects according to their needs, resources, possibilities, knowledge and skills.

III. Human rights and citizenship participation

To strengthen the culture and understanding of the integrity of human rights on the basis of participative and democratic citizenship where inclusion and respect are encouraged and new forms of organisation for collective well-being are developed. In those places that show social deterioration due to violence, emphasis is placed on peace building as a means of mutual understanding, reconstruction and reconciliation. Strengthen community processes that commit themselves to justice from grassroots.

IV. Health and environmental education

To provide individuals and groups with a deep knowledge of their environment in order to actively collaborate in respecting and valuing it; activities aimed at obtaining habits and attitudes of respect towards the environment and towards health care.

V. Pastoral

To facilitate in persons and groups processes that will bring about an experience of faith linked to life, that will help to mature their participation in the Church (or churches) and in civil society as thinking and proposing subjects.

Activities

I. En Ayutla de los Libres

• Developing skills to organise an organic garden for the local community.
• Networking with groups that have the same objectives.
• Campaigning against enforced disappearances.
• Campaigning for the right to territory.
• Alternativa FODELIT - Teacher Training for a Liberating and Transformative Education (91 schools in the area) - Enhancing community and participatory educational skills, fraternal, supportive and non-violent relationships, as well as responsible practices for the care of the environment in basic level teachers in 8 municipalities of the Costa Chica of Guerrero, which allow students to enjoy a dignified and transformative education, to live a culture of peace and care for the environment.
• ¡Ser Vida Feliz! (Be a Happy Life!) "Sowing healthy relationships for a dignified and happy life" (toy libraries, schools and summer educational missions).

II. In León

Community Centre: Weaving Hope:

• Children (120): Identify and strengthen the management of emotions, feelings; promoting children's rights and children’s citizenship participation through educational, cultural and recreational activities towards a culture of peace.
• Adolescents (15): Strengthen participation in human values, communication and teamwork with educational and sports training.
• Young people (55): Formation and training of young people in Social Service through contact and assertive communication with children.
• Women (20): Communication as a solution to problems, providing tools to deal with internal family conflicts and to release the violence that each woman experiences internally and externally. Training on sexuality issues.

III. In Cuanalá Puebla

• Enhancening the role of women, young people and adolescents as potential leaders: the development of capacities in adolescents and young women as social protagonists has been boosted from the approaches of popular education and gender equity, emphasizing on knowing what to do, knowing how to be, knowing how to live together, and knowing how to think reflectively and critically.

IV. In San Luís Potosí

• Love for reading - Training and refresher courses for teachers (8 schools): To create spaces where playful and joyful reading allows the emergence of users of written reading; and committed mediators to influence the creation of participatory and plural communities for the transformation of their context

 

?

Extra comments : 

Up to 2018, Arteaga (North zone) was also one of the zones where the project run its activities. Activity ended in 2018 when the RSCJ community shut.

International Volunteer Programme

Three BFN young women (French nationals) volunteered in León (on different moments). One Argentinian young women (2014) and one from Chile (2015) volunteered in Ayutla. All five volunteers spent a period of around 6 months.

People being served : People who are marginalised

Age group : Children 0-17, Young people 18-25, Adults 26-60

Number of participants : 251-500

Project status : Ongoing

Society presence :

Focus of the project : People

JPIC Imperative : Transforming and Being Transformed

UN Sustainable Development Goals :