Support 50 trainees on Social Development Projects

Along with the work we have been doing in Aguascalientes, Oaxaca, Cuajimalpa and Chimalhuacán, these past weeks we have been very busy in Coyoacán. Here is a bit of what’s been happening.

New endeavors

As we announced previously, Tlalaná is now in Santa Úrsula. We are about to finish our “Starting and strengthening social development projects” workshop. We have had 10 young enthusiasts that are starting to work with us. The sessions have been “interesting, entertaining and full of knowledge”, as one 14-year-old participant put it. He is interested in starting a community bike project, we will be working along with him to make it come true. Other ideas that are present in this laboratory are a soccer tournament for the Santa Úrsula community, a cultural hub and an artistic project that promotes freedom of expression and Mexican cultural values through history. We are very excited to start collaborating with these new collectives that are targeting young people with addiction problems, violence in families and environmental awareness in their communities.

Public event: “Feria de colectivos”

Along with this undertaking, we started promoting our own work within the community. With this in mind, we staged a participatory event in a park in the center of Santa Úrsula. The event was a success, more than 100 people attended and not even the rain stopped people from coming from all over the area, one of Mexico City’s most diverse socio-economically speaking. We are targeting the most marginalized groups of young people. For this, we are starting alliances with the rest of the community from that same area, who will be participating in this process side by side with us. The objective is to involve people in the development of their own community starting by recognizing the value of their help through empowerment, design for sustainability and proactivity. Our motto for this campaign is “Doing whatever you like, you can help anyone alike”.

Learning from our peers, doing for our community

While working, we have always tried to exchange knowledge and ideas with the people we collaborate with. In doing so, we try to always learn and apply what we learn from them. This time, we decided to take action and start our own vegetable garden. Following the example of DHS Guadalupe Peralta and Dkaya Ybaku, Tlalaná Network collectives in Aguascalientes and Oaxaca that work in environmentally sustainable processes through an organic greenhouse and PET recycling respectively. This will also give us the opportunity to learn from the land, attract the attention of other collectives and expand our capabilities for working with other community development projects through sharing experiences and exchanging the products of our hard work. The place we chose for this garden used to be used as a trash deposit, so we started cleaning it and making the soil fertile by adding compost to the lower layers, lots of work that we are sure will be worth every drop of sweat. We decided to take this ambitious project and we will be keeping you posted on the progress. For now, we have involved 14 people from around our neighborhood into preparing the land for planting. We are aiming at growing locally, getting our own produce in a sustainable and organic way, and getting to work with different people that will start being more aware of the environment and their own consumer habits and enjoying fresh vegetables on their tables all year round.

DF Node

Mexico City has been selected as the first site for our Network Model, which means that we will open our first node there. After one year of focusing our resources to feed the Tlalaná Network, with the help of the local government, interested individuals and groups we are starting to operate it. Here’s some of the work we are doing with these collectives:

Santa María la Ribera, Cuauhtémoc, DF

Enchúlame la Bici is now moving to a new shop, the new place is bigger and better suited to fit the needs of the collective which is now expanding their operation to fit more people and have more capabilities for fixing and making bikes. The collective is using this opportunity to improve their managing skills and instate a system for running the shop and the community project. Things are moving and this collective is well in the way of becoming a full operation that allows young people with self-employment, life-skills and life-project.

San Mateo Tlaltenango, Cuajimalpa, DF

Canto que Florece (another program from Adeco A.C.) and Tlalaná are joining forces with El Chante de Todos. We are together developing our models collaborating in this effort. In the meantime El Chante keeps their usual activities with their community which include danzón classes, movie projections and participation in their town’s celebrations recovering their history, organizing activities and planning events. We will soon have more exciting news about them.

Coyoacán

We are starting to work in the Pedregal de Carrasco, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Ajusco, Copilco el Alto, Pedregal de Santa Úrsula and Pedregal de Santo Domingo neighborhoods. These are some of Mexico City’s poorest communities, where young people are usually left to fend for themselves. It is up to them to continue studying or to find a job, whichever will take them and usually for minimal wages, being the lack of opportunities the constant. It is in this hostile environment that they are also coping with the challenges of finding themselves stability and a life project. It is not surprising that the area is teeming with young people on the streets. We are very excited to begin working in this area. We will be keeping you updated on our work and the results we achieve.

Tlalaná Facilitators workshop 2014: “Community Development Methodology”

For the fourth consecutive year we organized our Facilitator Workshop. This year we had 10 participants with different aspirations and expectations, all of which nurtured the space and made it unique, resulting in a very rich and educational experience for everyone. The result was that our team has 8 new members that are beginning to work on their skills as facilitators, they will soon be ready to take on new collective projects, we will be working hard these coming months to achieve this goal.