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For the last two months, 16 year-old students in high schools around the country have been participating in Intervida’s Publicity Workshop, whose aim is to promote critical thinking among adolescents as they analyze the values conveyed by publicity.The students work both individually and in groups to conduct a study of the advertised products, identifying the messages which brands send in order to create added value to their product and achieve their objectives.
Overall, the students demonstrated interest in the workshop and actively participated, offering their opinions and reaching conclusions about the values conveyed in the ads.
Teaching 2.0
In the age of technology and social networks, education is not limited to the classroom. As such, in addition to the in situ sessions, the students will continue forging their critical thinking skills through a Yotube channel and blog created for this purpose. This is an open forum for reflecting where the students can discover spots and links of interests, write their opinions and even upload their own videos.
And just to let you know, we are in the process of writing a feature story with the students on responsible consumption and the influence of publicity. This story will include interviews with students and professionals in the sector... but the best part is that you can listen to it in Podcast format!
We will keep you informed.
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Intervida’s Education for Development department organizes this and other workshops for all ages. If you would like more information, please contact us at docencia@intervida.org.
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This week in Intervida we were visited by Andrea and Katerine, two students in the 3rd year of ESO in search of solidary experiences.
Before the end of their visit, we asked them to write an assessment of their experience with our organization. Here it goes...
“We are Andrea and Katerine and at school they made us choose a NGO which works in education and contributes to human development.
Looking online we were interested in the projects which you carry out and we went to see you at the Children’s Fair. We really liked the children’s activities and decided that we wanted to learn more about your entity. So, at the beginning of January, we visited the headquarters so that you could explain more about your work.
We really liked Intervida’s working environment and saw that you work to help those who are most in need”.
Joan Riera, who acted as mentor to the girls during their visit to the entity, told us that they are very curious about the work we carry out in the field. Joan oriented them to the different projects we work on in the different countries and, according to him, “they were very interested in learning how we choose the projects and what our priorities are when it comes to working with the most vulnerable countries”.
Their visit to the organization was also productive for us, since in addition to learning about adolescents’ concerns and interests, Andrea and Katerine helped up to elaborate a database of libraries which could host our exhibits, such as “Life is in the Water”. You can view the photos on Flickr and a video on Youtube.
We dedicate this post to them and to all the people who have collaborated with us in the events: Thank you for your collaboration and interest… and see you soon!
Would you like to volunteer with us? Send us an e-mail at voluntariado@intervida.org and we’ll get in touch.
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With the slogan There is not path to peace, peace is the path, more than 4,000 preschool and primary school students participated, alongside a team of volunteers, in the peace, tolerance and social justice workshops organized by the Intervida Education for Development department on the School Day for Non-violence and Peace.
To promote peace and tolerance, spaces were created so that preschool and primary schools students in over ten of the country’s schools could reflect and discuss conflicts in search of peaceful and solidary solutions.
At Intervida we believe that the creation of active citizenship and critical social consciousness is the key to building a more just and solidary world. These activities represent another opportunity for converting schools to instruments of peace and social participation.
The activities are in line with the new Strategic Plan which Intervida presented in November 2009 and which insists on the need to educate for development, both in and out of the classroom.
The impressions
If you would like to see the activities which we implemented in the schools, you can’t miss this video. In it, you will meet Lidia and hear her impressions of the Intervida program.
*Lidia is one of our volunteers, professor and anthropologist. She has just come back from a trip around the world, visiting different schools and NGOs, raising social awareness of the importance of an education. You will be able to read a more in-depth interview with Lidia and learn about her experiences in the next edition of Intervida Magazine.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our volunteers for their participation. And remember, if you want to form part of our team of volunteers, all you have to do is send us an e-mail at voluntariado@intervida.org
The anecdote
Meritxell forms part of the Education for Development team and shares with us an anecdote from the event:
“After the workshops with the children, a little girl approached us with her notebook. She explained to us that it was her personal diary where she wrote that the special things that happened to her. And for her, the event has been so special that she asked us to write our names so that she could include them in her entry about the day.”
With these words we say good bye to the experience and hope to repeat it next year.
Thanks again and see you next time!
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Society is often labeled as lacking in solidarity. It is common habit to label everything, to minimize the subtle nuances of things, of diversity. Haiti shows us that we are not necessarily like this.
Haiti is an example of a globalized world taking action to help a country struck by catastrophe and crying out for international help. Every day new initiatives with diverse activities emerge around the world and in distinct sectors, all with a single aim: to help rebuild the country.
Haitian civil society has given us various examples of solidarity: restaurants distributing food or families taking children off of the street and into their homes until a family member can be contacted. This local social fabric is so solidary, in fact, that it is surprising that we have not devoted more media attention to it.
Nonetheless, it seems that international organisms do not always share the popular will: we reject the image of military supremacy and the United States and the European Union send 22,000 troops, among others, when recent history has proven that military interventions fail. We call for the cancellation of Haiti’s foreign debt and yet this issue is not included in the agenda of the leaders sending aid.
Solidarity is also evident in the flood of requests to adopt Haitian children, although this gesture has been misconstrued. Specialized networks like Relaf, which work for the right to live in family and community, warn us of the harmful effects which immediate adoption can have on these children. Moreover, the United Nations recommends, in the interest of protecting these children and their cultural identity, that they not be put up for adoption until two years following the active search for their family members. Furthermore, Spanish International Adoption laws state that “no requests for the adoption of minors will be processed while their country of residence is in the midst of a military conflict or natural disaster”.
The lesson to be learned here is that we should provide the UN with agile mechanisms for responding with humanitarian aid. The negative side of all this is that there are other haitis, other equally fragile states, which could face a similar situation and we cannot allow the international community to continue to act so slowly and ineffectively.
Intervida shares society’s sensibility and has sent funds through two organizations working in the area. But, above all, we are concerned about how the new Haiti will be build, that it be built by the Haitian people themselves; and we are concerned about how the children, beneficiaries of all of our projects, will be protected. The task of monitoring political leaders falls to the citizens, with a critical consciousness and the support of the social sector, of NGOs. As such, Intervida will continue to fight to ensure that children’s rights are respected, because despite external circumstances, children always have the right to be just that, children. We must fight to restore their childhood.
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New year, new resolutions.
If you are among those who dedicated a line on your list of resolutions for 2010 to solidarity, we have an interesting proposal for you…
In commemoration of the death of Mahatma Gandhi, the non-violent leader of the Indian independence movement and one of the spiritual masters of our time on January 30, 1964, Mallorcan poet and pedagogue Llorenç Vidal named this day the School Day of Non-violence and Peace.
And at Intervida, we want to celebrate this day by promoting an education in values, non-violence, conflict resolution and peace in the schools. As such, the Education for Development department has created an activities program for children 6-11 years of age: theater, painting, reading and film analyses, among other activities. The proposed activities calendar is for January 26, 28 and 29 and February 1, and so far more than 10 schools have expressed interest in participating.
So if you’re free and interested in this proposal and you want to stick to your new resolutions, send us an email at voluntariado@intervida.org and help us spread these values to children.
If you are not available these days, don’t worry, we are working on more projects, so go ahead and send us your information anyway and we’ll be in touch to learn about your preferences.
Thank you and we hope to see you soon!