Inter-generational Knowledge and Informal Educational Processes

The programs that make up this strategy reflect the huge diversity of cultural values, types of intelligence and wisdom that coexist among the neighborhood’s various generations. They also honor the idea that people continue to learn from the day they are born until the day they die, and that individual know-how can be collectivized by means of informal education.

The teacher-student hierarchy is constantly called into question by inviting neighbors to give workshops, courses and talks, and assume the role of professors/facilitators in work circles—roles that many of them have never played—, in an attempt to articulate and share their knowledge, and incorporate it into the daily life of their community. At the same time, these dynamics foster the re-adaptation of knowledge, making them versatile tools in the rescue of certain practices and the reappraisal of others, whose potential to bring about transformation and encourage interaction is not recognized by conventional systems that dictate what and how we should learn.

Strategy implementation programs:

Street Games

Dates: November 2023

Facilitated by: Moisés Ledesma

Participants: 22 girls and boys from Santa María la Ribera

Format: in-person

 

A workshop that recreated games that used to be played in the street. Three of them (hopscotch, pitch and toss, and tic-tac-toe) were taken to the neighborhood’s streets for people to interact and enjoy themselves.

 

Collage Calendars 

Dates: November 7 and 9, 2023

Facilitated by: Moises Ledesma

Participants: 32 girls and boys from Santa Maria la Ribera

Format: in-person

 

As a tool to promote the communal support, girls and boys created their own calendars for the year 2024. These were acquired by neighbors in exchange for a donation to the collective fundraising campaign Recreate.


Vegetable Sensorama

Date: July 19, 2023

Coordinated by: Casa Gallina

Facilitated by: Itzi Figueroa

Participants: 22 neighbors from Santa María la Ribera

 

An experience where preschool children and their families used their senses to review different ingredients in the Casa Gallina orchard, to foster links of affection and sensorial memory in a natural environment.


Reading Festival - Roberto Project

July 13 and 14, 2023

Coordinated by: Casa Gallina

Facilitated by: Moisés Ledesma and Andrea Ferrer

Participants: 111 inhabitants of Zacatlan and Cuacuila , state of Puebla.

 

In the framework of the 13th Roberto Foundation Reading Festival, Casa Gallina gave talks and workshops in the community centers this organization runs in Cuacuila and Zacatlan, in Puebla, which are aimed at education, the environment and the health of communities in the area.


Meeting: People over 60

Date: August 6, 2022

Participants: 9 elderly inhabitants of Santa María la Ribera

Format: in-person

 

On Saturday August 6, some of the people who received individual coaching in the use of cellphones and computers at Casa Gallina gathered to meet each other, talk about their learning processes and consider possible ways to form a group so as to share their knowledge and life experiences, notably with Santa María la Ribera’s children .


Digital Migrants: Permanent computer skills and mobile devices program

Dates: January – December 2019

Facilitators: Dalila Martínez Sosa, Emiliano Mendoza, Miguel Sierra and Sebastián Navarro

Participants: 50 senior citizens


This platform maintains a constant space without fixed programming that brings older adults closer to the use of digital technologies. The lessons given are related to the specific needs of each participant and are taught by a group of young neighbors between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five who do not have specific training in teaching or the advanced systems. In this platform the neighbors find themselves in processes of dialogue with their peers from other generations and an intergenerational exchange of knowledge that builds affections and networks is made possible. The tools learned allow them to problem solve and strengthen cooperation, work and business networks.


Digital Migrants: Introductory workshops in computer skills for daily tasks

Dates: July, September and October

Facilitators: Emiliano Mendoza, Miguel Sierra and Sebastián Navarro

Participants: 40 senior citizens


The basic use of digital technology workshops support the learning of introductory knowledge for adults who have never used a computer. The workshops help to familiarize the participants with the most common and practical uses of computers. The emphasis is on involving neighbors between fifteen and twenty-five years of age as instructors; they do not have specific training as teachers but do have basic computer knowledge obtained due to the generational situation in which they were born. The dynamic focuses on the effort they make to systematize their knowledge being an integral part of in a short-term program that tests their ability to share what they know and establish empathic ties with their neighbors from other generations.