In 2022, Angélica María González Slovasevich receives the EcoJoven Award for a project in which she was able to realize a dream: to launch, implement, implement her research and present the results in order to popularize the experience. After designing it, he created a community management group, and about a year later he kept it among his priorities.
Her goal was very clear: to stimulate environmental education at the University of Hermanos Saez Montes de Oca in Pinar del Rio (UPR) through this group, which does not mean, in the opinion of the young woman, “that the content of the students is theoretically suitable for their professional development in the academic setting, but that they achieve learning deeper about environmental education.”
With the project they go to the core of this concept: «It involves commitment and responsibility towards the environment, with communities, with social and environmental development. Therefore, the stimulation of environmental education in the UPR necessarily influences the development of the locality of Pinar del Río. It is to influence the quality of life of the population and society, and it is to protect nature.
For these purposes, this community management group was born with students from the profession of pedagogy and psychology, a profile in which Angelica has worked since her graduation in 2019, although in recent months her working relations with the graduate school have been established. Two community projects, and the rest of the time he stays at the Center for Education and Promotion of Sustainable Development (Ceprodeso), a space in which he also manages to do what he considers “awareness-raising impactful science.”
From the universal periodic review and for society
Currently, the group interacts with professors of the same course and with members of different people’s councils. From its conception, the intention was to first penetrate the university itself, so that students and teachers of various professions were planned to develop works of a social and environmental nature.
The idea was to provoke them into joining the commitment created by the group and, on a more practical level, to accompany us on a mission to help communities manage their conflicts and interests.
“In the same way, in the school itself we have pursued the idea of helping students create more sustainable practices and educators designing curricula in which they promote spaces for dialogue based on popular and natural knowledge.”
The young researcher points out that students and professors from other professions, such as economics, also joined, which is why they had a very humane group, made up of friends: «We all help each other because the tasks are not easy. We have organized workshops to go to the community and give a psycho-educational lecture, or simply to help and accompany them with cleaning and sanitation tasks.”
Angelica points out that they never worked alone, because from the start they had the support of Ceprodeso, the president of Berta Cáceres as well as the religious institutions of the province.
Communities suffering from social and environmental conflicts always benefit from the project, since one of the group’s goals is to change the mentality and work patterns: «We do not give complete answers, we help the members of this community to be able to self-manage and generate independence.
The young woman does not cease to point out that she starts from diagnosis all over, and the group, also as a community, has worked together to prepare, organize and develop skills in coordinating tasks; They brought together and delved into content related to popular education and the participatory research method, with the goal of implementing cohesive practices that truly help communities.
This project has been implemented since 2020 in different regions of Pinar del Rio. They have reached out to those seeking their intervention and others with complex diagnoses or in vulnerable situations.
Angelica adds that group members even receive invitations to deliver informative lectures and workshops: “It’s 20 minutes to use and can’t be missed. We are at the university level as well as in communities.
“It is important to stress that we follow the guidelines of popular education and methodology laid down for societal work, and not at all intrusive talk, empty talk, or endless sermons… Quite the contrary. It is, in essence, a community dialogue.”
The project presented by Angelica Maria in 2022 will never fit on the page of a newspaper. Their work was important in the days after Hurricane Ian across Vueltapajera County: “We went to work stations, to fields to help workers, to evacuation centers…and not just to make donations, but to support them emotionally, because that’s essential in our work, working with people’s emotions and spirituality.” .
“The results suggest that we have not worked in vain, because other societies keep suing us. We have fallen back on some over and over again;
However, this girl with a passion for pedagogy, psychology, social sciences and the environment points out: “The most important achievement of the project is seeing the commitment created in the teachers and students who formed part of the group at some point”, because, as he explains, its membership is not fixed: it receives new members All the time, while others leave for various reasons.
Quality of community work
Regarding the project’s perspectives, Angelica argues that it does not aim to standardize an integrated community work practice: «In other words, the university is not the champion of community work itself, but rather builds a network to carry out community work. In the localities, so that it solves one of the main problems that have been studied for years throughout the country with regard to community work, its intrusive nature, because although it is funded, it does not always respond to the interests of the community.
For a young woman, it is necessary to do a good community work that identifies and solves social and environmental problems and, above all, contributes to the creation of awareness and sustainable practices, from a critical attitude towards caring for the environment, based on gender relations. , without stereotypes of any kind and in a social justice environment.
The investigation, according to Angelica, changes you as a university student, as a teacher, as a citizen. And the most important thing is not the act of investigation, but the act of transforming reality and its difficulties. “This work makes me fall in love, and even better, it made the other students and teachers who joined the project fall in love with it. This is the most enriching.”
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