Brincando la barda

Participación juvenil, entre la escuela y la comunidad

Abstract

Jumping over the fence. Young people’s participation between school and community settings. How do young people participate in rural communities? How does their participation vary at school and in the community? How can we encourage participative processes that recover community knowledge and practices within the school system? These were some of the questions that guided our work during a participative experience with young people in Santo Domingo Ocotitlán, a small village in Tepoztlán, Morelos, in México. The process began at the local telesecundaria, the distance junior highschool program, and then extended to other spaces in the community. Observing how the experience grew gave us the opportunity of making general guidelines to create a model in which young people use the school setting as a platform to organize and launch projects of their own which can then grow and reach the rest of the community.