We are incredibly excited to share the first of many videos created in the popular education workshops we are running in Juanacatlán and Guadalajara. Karen, Lety, and Cristian live in and around Juanacatlán, and are students at the local high school. Their video is moving and they worked very hard to piece it together. We are so proud! Please ost the video and share it; they made the video to make positive change for their communities and we want to help spread the word.
We are really excited to share this short video about the process and participants of our video workshops. Consider this a trailer for the videos they created which we should be posting soon! As always, we look forward to feedback and questions. We plan to publish our video workshop methodology, which is popular education based, once it is more refined.
Steve reporting here: My week was full of integrating and learning. It included meeting IMDEC folks, going to Juanacátlan to facilitate social media workshops, and eating bacon. Juanacátlan is my focus. I’ve met wonderful people there, including lifelong residents who told me of the glorious history of this laid-back, lovely pueblito.
In the spirit of community and communication, we made an introduction video for Steve to meet IMDEC. Let me just say, we had a lot of fun with it. We have been playing around with our Flip Cameras and iMovie to prepare for our workshops in Juanacátlan, so we made the video with those tools. Tomorrow we have our second video workshop with a group of high schoolers and we look forward to seeing the footage they have taken and introducing storytelling and editing techniques. We are designing the workshop to be popular education based, and look forward to its co-evolution with the participation of our students.
I made it to Guadalajara! This week was spent adjusting, catching up with my sweet pals Sarah and Arthur. We’ve known each other for nearly 5 years and are incredibly exicted to finally be collaborating after following each others’ work for so long. My name is Steve Fisher and I now coordinate interviews and promote community outreach for A2S (Adapting to Scarcity). I’ll be working with them for at least three months. My background is in Latin American politics, anthropology, and popular education. Check out my bio to learn more about me.
Yesterday we went out to Juanacátlan where I saw (and smelled) why we have to use gas masks to film near the river. I also talked with Rodrigo, an incredible community organizer who explained some of the issues they were dealing with in regards to the Rio Santiago. I’ll be living in Juanacátlan part-time doing the prep work for workshops and filming.
Arthur and I just returned from IMDEC’s five day conference on ’systematization’ at a Franciscan monastery located on the outskirts of Guadalajara. In a nutshell, systematization is a popular education methodology for reexamining organizational and personal work, releasing tension and emotions, and renewing hope. The workshop doubled as group therapy for the attending popular educators, social-cultural actors and activists; rich in cultural realizations and, for us, a serious language lesson.
IMDEC hosted a Latin American wide popular education conference this weekend to mark their 45th anniversary as an organization. It was an incredibly rich and hopeful conference, and also an exhausting experience for us to film and listen to Spanish for 12 hours a day. Popular education leaders from Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, El Salvador, Colombia, and many states within Mexico came to present, listen, and engage.
The warmth, dedication, and down to earth nature of the popular education leaders made the field of popular education even more exciting. The conference ended with a Día de los Muertos influenced celebration at IMDEC’s headquarters (check out the beautiful altar we got to help make to the left), and included a deeply touching Mayan Día de los Muertos ceremony, musical and dance performances by conference participants, and two live bands with lots of fabulous dancing. In case there were any doubts – popular educators definitely know how to get down. Read more »
Yes, this week we enjoyed a full social calendar of meeting and greeting a gaggle of wonderful people. It’s been a true pleasure. First off, we’ve gotten to know the fine people of IMDEC. The experience and collective knowledge of their staff is impressive and the familial atmosphere of their workspace is rather inviting.
IMDEC began as a popular education organization, with theoretical roots in the work of Paulo Frere. They have since expanded their scope of expertise to include sustainable development and human rights advocacy. In two weeks we’ll help them document a Latin American wide popular education conference, marking their 45th year anniversary as an organization.
Milestones | sarah | 
4 March 2010 18:02 | 
Comments (1) 
Hello Wonderful Readers,
I made it to Guadalajara! This week was spent adjusting, catching up with my sweet pals Sarah and Arthur. We’ve known each other for nearly 5 years and are incredibly exicted to finally be collaborating after following each others’ work for so long. My name is Steve Fisher and I now coordinate interviews and promote community outreach for A2S (Adapting to Scarcity). I’ll be working with them for at least three months. My background is in Latin American politics, anthropology, and popular education. Check out 
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