Over 40 years ago, popular education appeared with its revolutionary proposal of transforming the social reality of learners in Latin America. Many years later, this approach is still upheld. Nodo TAU, APC’s member in Rosario, Argentina, adapts and applies this model to the work it does providing training for new information and communication technologies (ICTs). The blackboard and chalk made room for a monitor and a mouse, but the underlying principle is the same: learners are their own vehicles for change.
APCNews spoke to Florencia Roveri, from Nodo Tau, about the challenges and the learning process that each training experience entails and to which they dedicate a great deal of enthusiasm and energy. There is no room for improvisation: the essential components of many projects are found in the research and diagnostic phases.
This is how the FRIDA [1] funded "Introducing the perspective of popular education in the creation of training materials on ICT for social development" project came into existence. For over a year, pedagogical support has been created so that other organisations involved in ICT issues could design and implement their own trainings. It is a matter of producing knowledge, but also includes, above all, sharing it. Florencia states, "it intends to develop workbooks, try them out, evaluate and improve them. During the trial period we decided to work with different groups: young people, women and producers linked to the social and solidarity driven economy". In this manner, theory and practice nourish each other, each of these groups is going to be appraised according to its specific nature.
1 FRIDA: Regional Fund for Digital Innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean
Popular education, with its specific methodology and the very revolutionary proposal of Paulo Freire [2] compared to traditional education, proposes that learning be based in the reality of the learner," Florencia continues. "Then, the challenge is to be able to cross from the content linked to learning about new technologies over to the issues of the person attending the training".
2 Founder of the popular education movement, born in Brazil (1921-1997).
The whole participatory process by definition says that "the idea is to include issues and discussions that have to do with gender, for example, or with a solidarity driven economy, or with issues that are sensitive to young people, in the pedagogical content. Educational workbooks are then elaborated throughout the trainings and are later shared with ICT training organisations."
Young people from social organisations in Rosario are actively participating in another type of proposal. Nodo TAU, through the Argentinean government’s Include Youth in the National Direction [Administration] (Dirección Nacional de la Juventud – DINAJU) programme is advancing in a new training direction concentrated on web design and internet content creation.
For most of them, computers are not mysterious and frightening objects. They are rather something common place that they use on a daily basis. Florencia explains that "what is generated during the discussion with the young people is very interesting, because in reality it is a group that has a very intimate relationship with technology. Working with them is different from working with older women, who view technology with much more fear, as something much more fragile."
What purpose does this training have then? The challenge is for them to create graphic pieces, from a brochure to a webpage, with communication and design criteria that benefit what they want to communicate. This is the problem of many organisations that do no less intense journalistic work. Through the enREDado portal, relevant information is disseminated to the Rosarian civil society. Now the opportunity to "broaden the view" presents itself, Florencia explains. This opportunity comes around with RITS, APC’s member in Brazil, with its RitsLAC initiative for Latin America.
“RitsLAC intends for us to speak of national processes and share it with other organisations from Latin American countries," notes Florencia. By contributing to the content of Social Mosaic (Mosaico Social), the regional RitsLAC portal, the matter is now "observing the national reality in order to share it and become part of Latin American project, o see it as journalistic task.”
Journalism is also a way of transforming realities. From different places, Nodo TAU is providing more than a mere grain of sand to make this change possible.