Meeting and Greeting
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.
The first community we visited was La Huizachera. La Huizachera is a neighborhood located on the outskirts of Guadalajara with the Canal Ahogado, an open air canal carrying untreated effluent (industrial and human), running right through the neighborhood. The people use the water for various things (for their livestock, making bricks [a large industry in the area], drinking, cleaning, etc.).
IMDEC has been running an environmental education and photography project program for over a year with three groups of kids in the area. I was struck by one of IMDEC’s efforts – to help the kids understand that their community wasn’t always as polluted and trash ridden. For ten year old kids, this canal in its current state is all they know. It’s normal. The folks at IMDEC mentioned working with the elders to share the communal history. When we learn more, we’ll post it.
We are helping to create a photo exposition in the schools and central plaza of the town. Together with the kids and IMDEC employees, we’ll go through the selection and mounting process. We hope to film the kids and interview them about their lives and the future they’d like to see in la Huizachera.
Our grand plan is to bring the exposition to San Francisco, gaining support for IMDEC to continue their work in Huizachera and sharing the childrens’ art and stories outside of their community (as requested!). If anyone has gallery connections, please get in touch with us. They have taken some incredibly moving photos.
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Adapting to Scarcity » Taking a Step Back — 5 November 2009 @ 16:38
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