Saturday we went on a moving and rich tour of the Ahogado watershed and a portion of the Santiago watershed with two classes of students from Iteso, a Jesuit college located on the outskirts of Guadalajara. While we are still wrapping up our workshops in Juanacatán and El Salto, we began workshops with approximately 50 students at Iteso in collaboration with the professor and our friend, Étienne. There are some great photos of the journey, click here to peruse them all. Read more »
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.
<== 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.
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!
On Wednesday our friend Pablo from IMDEC took us on a powerful tour of the municipio of El Salto where he lives. We revisited La Huizachera and voyaged southeast away from the city, tracking the Canal Ahogado’s path to where it feeds into the Rio Santiago. Then we followed the Rio Santiago through the largest industrial corridor in Guadalajara, stopping to explore the El Salto/Juanacatlan waterfalls, and finished our trip along the Rio Santiago in rural Juanacatlan. It was a difficult journey.
Equipment, Milestones, Relationships | sarah | 
8 March 2010 18:20 | 
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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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