<== Check out our new logo!!! Infinite thanks to the very talented and hardworking Jon Doyle of Jon Doyle Design.
After feedback, constructive criticism and more time on the ground, we’ve decided to amend our mission statement. Without further ado:
Our mission is to empower and connect communities adapting to water scarcity. By providing technical assistance to expand the use of social media, we are contributing to participatory grassroots organizing within local communities. Over time, we aim to improve the communication internationally among communities that are facing water scarcity.
We’re gearing up to finally start our community video project with the FlipVideo cameras in El Salto and Juanacátlan. Our first group will be made up of high school students already working to investigate the serious negative health effects of the highly polluted Rio Santiago. We’ll be posting more details soon!
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.
Read more »
Recently, we began the fun experience of helping the kids in IMDEC’s environmental clubs put together their photo exposition. First, with Cecilia, our Argentinian collaborator counterpart and talented photographer, we delved through well over 2,000 photos and narrowed them down to 70. As we explained to the kids, photo expositions are all about creating a narrative, so we were careful to choose photos that captured more of their lives, the environment they live in, and their ongoing participation in digital storytelling/environmental education. Read more »
We thought it would be a good idea to take a step back and share a brief overview of the communities around Guadalajara that we’re working with. At the moment, there are three:
While they are geographically disparate and are facing their own unique issues, they are all a part of the Río Santiago watershed. To get a better sense of the area and the communities we’re working with, be sure to check out the map at the end of the post!
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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 »
<== Check out our new logo!!! Infinite thanks to the very talented and hardworking Jon Doyle of Jon Doyle Design. 
Logistics, Relationships | arthur | 
21 November 2009 16:48 | 
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