WHAT DO WE DO?
Education Area
The area of education includes programmes and projects aimed at increasing the level of schooling and the academic and social aspirations of the children and young people of Las Joyas, as a tool to access a better quality of life.
TRIBUS AUGE
Children's companion and learning groups
It is widely demonstrated that the social and familiar surroundings in which boys and girls live, directly influence thier academic aspirations. The low level of schooling of parents and close relatives is a close predictor of the level of schooling that children will reach.
To promote a better level of life to the people in the zone, it is necessary to break this vicious cycle through an intervention that motivates students and gives them tools that they can not get at home.
Our Academic Support program started in 2013 and its main purpose is to strongly fight the deficit in the education level that boys and girls in Elementary School and High School Levels have, mainly in the Reading Comprehension, Writing, and Math Areas, so we can avoid the educational lag that keeps on growing year after year and that may cause kids to abandon school.
That is why we attend kids at our after school groups, to counsel them about their homework but mainly developing activities that help them understand better the basic knowledge that they learned at their morning school. We work closely with several schools in the zone to locate those students that need more assessment and to verify their progress.
Horizons Program
This is a motivation program which purpose is to rise the academic aspiration of boys, girls, youngsters and even adults to work with them and motivate them to stay more years in school and get better results while studying. Our program includes the teaching of propaedeutic courses that prepares students to get better results when they apply to their admission tests for High School. We also share with students information of the studies they can do in the surrounding areas underlying the excitement of education in general.
Since 2013 we started preparing young people as well as adults to be able to retake High School, this we do with the help of several volunteer teachers who also teach at some of the finest colleges in the city. Since 2015 we have taught 200 students every year, most of them have been accepted into different High Schools after taking their admission exam.
Second Oppotunity High School
It is very common for teenagers to quit school after Junior High, in most cases this is because they have started a family way too early and their family needs them to get a job instead of staying in school. Our program named Young people with Direction is a proposal that we offer teenagers who are 18 years old or older and we teach and counsel them directly so they can get their High School Certificate in a year, while they can keep working. While they are undergoing this program, we offer them social-emocional tools as well as some other abilities necessary for their life and their work. This is a program that can happen only because of our link with Youthbuild organization and also working hand in hand with other government institutions. In the two generations that we have successfully concluded, 80% of our students did finish High School.
Integral Health Area
The aim of Auge’s Integral Health area is to ensure that the community learns to take care of itself, empower itself and positively modify those conditions that affect its physical and mental wellbeing. To achieve this, it divides its actions into 3 programmes:
Raising them together
Upbringing counseling groups through Whatsapp
Following the wider definition of health as a “whole state of physical, mental and social well being more than just the absence of diseases” our program wants to generate the conditions so boys and girls can grow in a healthy way through virtual education groups, through which trained people counsel, accompany and contain about upbringing matters to all those mothers who have children between 0 and 8 years old. The main purpose is to help mothers grow knowledge and abilities that allow them to raise their kids in violence free environment that can boost the children’s´abilities and virtues. These groups are formed by several young mothers, some of them still teenagers, that receive reliable information related with social, emotional and physical development. Also including health and feeding themes where mothers feel free to ask whatever questions that may have while we all share strategies.
Taking advantage of the fact that cell phones and smartphones are everywhere today and how popular the App known as WhatsApp so we can provide with information about pregnancy and child upbringing so the community has a trustable source for any doubts they can have about their children while babies and at a very young age. If it is necessary, we contact mothers with organizations, so they can have access to answers when their doubts are very complex.
Through these groups, mothers have the opportunity to reflect about this stage, recognize their needs, their strengths and resources and use them in the best way possible to change situations that prevent kids from reaching all their potential, such as economical and social needs, violence and several cultural aspects. Through our groups, mothers have group support at all times to get through such an important. delicate and life-changing stage.
Nutrition education program
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Having a proper diet is essential to maintain health, however, in an environment with economic limitations, food availability and/or lack of information, it is difficult to choose foods that not only satisfy hunger, but also adequately nourish the body, especially when the body is growing. For this reason, the program emphasizes providing information that allows the inhabitants of the Las Joyas polygon to take advantage of the resources available to them to feed their families adequately.
The program encompasses various interventions, depending on the target audience, but always based on a diagnosis of food and nutritional needs, in addition to the training process in which each person is involved. In the case of mothers, interests and needs are identified, as well as the family budget allocated to food, and food orientation strategies are generated, such as food preparation workshops, educational sessions and the preparation of orientation materials or the dissemination of contents.
Within educational institutions, diagnoses are made of the nutritional status of students and their eating habits and, according to the results, interventions are proposed to increase knowledge, providing adequate information. The aim is to generate strategies for a better selection of the food available.
Preventing Risks and Access to health
The program seeks to provide tools to the population so that they can react in an adequate and timely manner to the health problems they encounter, from training in first aid, the detection of warning signs in the most common diseases, or the adequate control of chronic conditions. The ultimate goal is to reduce the damage that may be caused by health problems present in the population.
To achieve this, different actions are developed depending on the detected need; it could be isolated talks on a topic of interest, to courses arranged with other associations or govenmental institutuions specialized in each topic. Also, through a network of Solidarity doctors, individual advice is provided regarding any health issues that require specialists, to ensure that people are attended to in a timely and adequate manner, and to facilitate their follow-up in public or private instances.
Coexistence and Healthy Relationships
This program cuts across all areas of AUGE and provides service to the other programs, attending the socio-emotional training of users and their families, through workshops, and following up on cases of domestic and gender violence. The program seeks to harmonize the efforts made by each and every on of our programs around the development of social and emotional skills in children, teens and young people; the integration of positive parenting tools, dialogue and healthy coexistence relationships between families, and in the community in general.
Art Training Area
One of the central strategies for reducing violence and building a culture of peace in Las Joyas is to find activities for children and adolescents that will keep them off the streets and away from gangs. But arts education is not only an effective pretext to occupy them, it offers many more formative advantages.
Currently, our main project in this area is the Sonar Las Joyas orchestra.
Sonar Las Joyas
“I have been studying music since I was 4 years old, since that moment, I entered into a family.That family has guided me to learn things, not only music related, but things that I need to face in life and that is the success of our system (Children Orquestras in Venezuela)” Gustavo Dudamel, conductor Los Angeles Philharmonic Orquestra.
Orchestral music generates neuronal development in those who practice it that have an effect on many other areas of human activity. In addition, working in an orchestra develops values of collaboration, discipline, the search for excellence, aesthetic appreciation, communication, solidarity, tolerance, self-esteem and responsibility.
That is why we haven our Sonar Las Joyas program, a children and youth orchestra that integrates boys and girls from 8 to 18 years old. The target audience is not only the children, but also their families. The project itself has great potential as a rehabilitator of the social fabric by bringing families together with a common goal and by providing quality artistic presentations to enliven daily life.
Sonar las Joyas does not emphasize artistic perfection for its own sake: music is a formative pretext. All children are admitted, regardless of their artistic gifts, and progress is made with each one at his or her own pace.
The Orchestra is also a project that articulates many actions with the children and their families. An artistic training center that has musical products, but that serves as a pretext to gather families around and work on other aspects with the participants and with their brothers and sisters, also, with their parents.
The Orchestra is designed to function basically with classes in small groups, by instruments, and orchestral rehearsals, every day, at least three or four hours. The boys and girls are summoned and enter first to classes of some instrument, sol-fa, and choir. Afterwards they choose the instrument they are interested in. The teachers are not only good at what they do, but also convinced of a project of this nature, accompanying the process of each child.
We currently attend more than one hundred children and we have proven the great transforming potential of music in them.
We have had important performances in many different forums. Many times in the same polygon of Las Joyas, because we also want to be an element of identity and pride in the area (because we bear the name of the polygon). But we also perform in important forums, such as the Mateo Herrera Hall, the María Grever Hall, the Doblado Theater and the Roberto Plascencia Saldaña Bicentennial Theater in León. We have been in universities (Universidad Iberoamericana León, La Salle Bajío and Tec de Monterrey León) and outside León, in spaces such as the Human Rights Commission in México City, and the Commission to Prevent Discrimination of Mexico City, and we were invited to the community of Santa María Tlahuiltoltepec Mixe, in Oaxaca, in an experience of musical exchange with the Ayuuk indigenous people, recognized for the importance they give to music.
Concerts
Impact In Our Sorroundings Area
The Impact in our Surroundings Area, has a double purpose: On one hand, to promote self_ managed community organizations to strengthen free, voluntary and informed social participation, and on the other, to influence – together with community organizations present in the area – public policies that affect the population of Las Joyas .
To achieve this, the area has the following programs and projects:
- Programa Territorios. Projects: Parque Bosque la Olla, Cañada del Real y Rizos de la Joya
- Programa de Gestión Social. Projects: Red de Solidaridad la Olla y Agenda Social de Necesidades.
Programa Territorios
Territorios is a program that strengthens neighbor organization through group support and formal training for its members. It seeks to increase the community´s skils and knowledge of community organization, with a view to enhance collective capacities to solve problems at the community level, address perceived needs, and foster social participation.
We work with neighborhood leaders and community groups to develop projects that respond to the population´s most pressing needs with local authorities so that the community, government, and other groups can colaboratively work towards the solution of such problems.
There are 3 projects as part of this program:
Bosque La Olla
Since 2014, we have been managing the restoration of a 3.5 hectare property in the northern part of Las Joyas Desde to transform it into a park. Initially this property was considered a vacan lot with no social or environmental value in the área.
For many years, several groups of neighbors and other volunteers along with us cleaned it, cared for it, maintained it and reforested it. In 2021 we formed a women´s committee who have since gathered weekly to make it a worthy space for the community.
Finally in 2022, after a long negotiation, the Municipality of León began the construction of el Parque de la Olla con fondos públicos. Today, Auge is working to promote a new management model that involves the community in the decision-making of the park..
Cañada del Real
In 2016 Auge started its work in the neighborhood known as Cañada del Real, the largest condominium complex in the State of Guanajuato according to Instituto Municipal de la Vivienda (IMUVI). It is formed 83 apartment buildings with 20 apartments each (1,600 apartments total) and inhabited by around 5,000 people.
Together with a group of neighbors, efforts have been made to improve social participation, manage access to more and better municipal services, and to promote arts, sports and education in the community.
Currently, from the Impact in our surroundings are, we help coordinate of the Cañada del Real Community Center and the Las Joyas Sunday Lead Project which is based at the neighborhood soccer fields. Auge´s role in the sports project is to support and accompany the organization, train the community leaders who are involved and mediate the decisions that are made between the different stakeholders.
Rizos
In the third section of the Rizos de La Joya, a group of women motivated by the desire to rescue, care for and maintain a donated area so it could be used as a neighborhood park. Since 2024, this group of women has developed various activities with the goal of improving this space for its ability to provide a recreational alternative for the community.
There have been several activities organized such as tree planting, training courses and workshops for women, recreational and cultural workshops for children and teenagers and community cinemas for all families. As in other territories, Auge´s support encourages the activities to be designed, implemented and evaluated by the members of Rizos women members themselves.
Currently, the Rizos women’s group is working on installing a wooden fence around the park’s perimeter and designing play areas for children and teenagers.
SOCIAL MANAGEMENT
Every election period, politicians from all parties visit Las Joyas area proposing ideas that come across a candidate´s desk but rarely do they work with the people to actually understand what are really people’s needs and what their priorities really are.
The Social Management program seeks to influence, together with the residents of Las Joyas, the public policies that affect them, placing common issues and needs as the priority and ensuring that government actions respond to the most pressing social demands of the community.
For that, we have the following projects in place:
Red de Solidaridad La Olla
Red la Olla is a type II supporting organization Auge has coordinated and supported since 2014. It arose from the need to combine the efforts of several social organizations that work within the Las Joyas area to build synergies for the benefit of the community. Initially, it was formed for civil associations, but over time, community leaders and public agencies have joined too.
Red la Olla gathers bimonthly meetings which are convened to monitor the collaborative work of the committees, agree on common action strategies, and respond to emerging problems in Las Joyas.
Agenda Social de Necesidades (Social Need Agenda)
Every three years since 2015, during the local election year, we summon the Las Joyas inhabitants to dialogue and express their needs in an orderly manner so we can together build a community diagnosis we call Agenda Social de Necesidades (Social Need Agenda).
This document, in which more than 600 people from different neighborhoods in the zone participate is then presented to candidates who are running for Mayor of the city of León and local councils so that they can listen (and not propose) to the population of Las Joyas through dialogue.
The importance of the Agenda lies in the community’s prioritization of the problems they are facing. The last two Agendas have incorporated the voices of children, and in the latest edition in 2024, participatory mapping was done in the polygon’s sub-areas.
The Agenda has served to establish a close relationship with authorities and has influenced the way the municipality intervenes in the area, helping to partially resolve problems like mobility, the lack of educational spaces, and the restoration of recreational spaces. The Agenda, is also, as its name suggests, a roadmap of actions to be followed by Auge and the leaders grouped in the Red La Olla.