After the arrival of the volunteers in Chiapas (Mexico) and the first Job Shadowing that our colleague Jesús carried out in the municipality and the facilities of MAMKACH GAL (Local Action Group), and as a result of the analysis of the situation, we thought it was appropriate to carry out a second supervision visit by Asociación Mundus.
In our first visit to Mexico in February, agreements were established for the activities that the volunteers should carry out during their stay in the country. After our meeting and the assessment of needs, it was agreed that the project would have two main points of focus for performance. In one hand, in the municipality of Motozintla, where one of the identified needs was the lack of awareness of the population about the contamination occurring in recent years was occurring, and that due to the lack of existing resources (or to poor distribution on the part of from the mayor’s office of the resources provided) was becoming a problem for the inhabitants. The municipality has a “landfill” to dispose of all the garbage, but it lacks a waste treatment system, nor does it have a recycling plant, nor recycling and separation policies.
The second focus of action was carried out in El Porvenir, a community with less population and less resources, with a beautiful natural environment but a neglected natural park. In this case, it was proposed to perform maintenance and conservation of the natural space, to raise awareness of the importance of keeping those spaces clean. They also started a rural tourism project that needed a boost and greater support from the inhabitants of the community to make it sustainable. Both municipalities have a large number of young unemployed people, who don’t know where to invest their time after finishing high school.
After the feedback we received from the volunteers and from Jesús, we saw the need to turn the project around and, without losing the focus of attention, create a new strategy which is much more productive for all parties. That is why I traveled back to Mexico, to help out with the new proposal of activities and to support the LAG in whatever was necessary.
During my visit, I had the opportunity to corroborate that a great existing need, and that we could unite with the previous premises, was that young people were motivated to do things and collaborate in the municipality, but lacked the infrastructure to meet and places where they could carry out projects that they had in mind.
Until then, activities with the young people had been carried out daily through group dynamics, which had allowed them to get to know each other and generate much stronger bonds, and they had also spoken / opined / acted on the basis of the proposed topics. We both saw the need to turn the project around and (without losing the focus of attention) create a new strategy that were much more productive for all parties. That is why I traveled back to Mexico, to help out with the new proposal of activities and to support the LAG in whatever was necessary.
During my visit, I had the opportunity to corroborate that a huge need existed indeed, that linked with the previous ideas: It was that young people were motivated to do things and collaborate in the municipality, but lacked the infrastructure to meet, and places where they could carry out projects that they had in mind.
Until then, activities with the young people had been carried out daily through group dynamics, which had allowed them to get to know each other and generate much stronger bonds, and they had also spoken / opined / acted on the basis of the proposed topics.
Both municipalities / communities had a “house of culture”, where children could attend to carry out educational workshops, but in the case of El Porvenir it had been inactive for a long time, and in the case of Motozintla, only children under 14 were participating . So the general impression was that in both places, the youth population had neither activities nor places addressed for them.
During my visit, I met with the LAG board to assess the real possibility of starting again the activity in the house of culture of El Porvenir, and also the possibility of enabling a space in the municipality of Motozintla to turn it into a social space for youth, where young people themselves could manage and take it on their own and under their support and supervision. The response was very positive and we decided to work in that line the remaining months of the project, without forgetting main guidelines of each project: to raise awareness about pollution and the importance of the environment, and rural tourism and the conservation of natural spaces.
Almost at the end of my visit, they organised a meeting in our honor with the representatives of the different associations of the municipality to publicise the project, and to request the collaboration of anyone who could and would like to help out. The attendees were very interested in the project and asked many questions, and most of them requested that they would like Younic’s actions to reach their communities as well.