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 main objective of the Impact in our Surroundings Area is to regenerate healthy social ties, strengthen community identity and deepen democracy when making decisions that directly affect people and their surroundings.
Las Joyas is an area in the process of consolidation with numerous undeveloped spaces. We want to move towards an urbanization that is friendly to the environment, more socially just, that encourages solidarity among its inhabitants and that comes from community self-management.
We seek to directly influence the design of public policies for social and urban development from a participatory perspective and reconstruction of the social fabric, for which we maintain the following programs, each with different projects:
- Programa Territorios. Its projects are: Parque Bosque la Olla, Cañada del Real, Parque El Renacimiento and others.
- Social Management Program. Its projects are: La Olla Solidarity Network and Social Agenda of Needs.
- Social economy and Solidarity Program. Its projects are: Job Training and Work self-management.
- Transversal Projects. Its projects and activities involve all users of AUGE and our programs to strenghthen collaboration among us as well as our social fabric.
Territories programme
The Territorios Program consists mainly of accompanying the community while they organize for the care, defense, preservation appropriation and social reconstruction of the territory. A territory as the conjuction of the physical space and the social and cultural relationships that are built on and from it.
In this program we propritiate the management and design, with different social, public and private actors, of the actions and public policies necessary to respond to the need for more green areas, more coexistance spaces and improvement in basic services in the Las Joyas area.
There are four main areas in this program:
Bosque La Olla Park
It consists of the rescue of a 3.5 hectare proprerty in the Northern area of the Las Joyas industrial estate, so that it can be used as a public park by the entire community. Between 2014 and 2022 Auge coordinated the reforestation, cleaning and maintenance of the land.
In 2021, we formed the La Olla Forest Committee, mainly made of women and young people from Las Joyas who meet weekly to carry out tasks of care, conservation and dialogue with the authorities to promote social participation in the park. At the end of 2022, after several years of negotiations, the Municipality of León began the construction of the Bosque la Olla Park with the public budget.
Cañada del Real
Cañada del Real is a community project centered in accompanying the neighbor organization of the people who live in the most complex and the highest populated area in Las Joyas. Cañada del Real is a vertical development with 83 towers of 20 apartments each, inhabited by around 7,000 people. We seek to recover abandoned and unsafe urban public spaces within the neighborhood.
Paying great attention to strenthening social ties, promoting art, education and culture as well as the care and maintenance of the environment through collective actions, working with Grupo Vecinal de Cañada del Real made by men and women from the neighborhood.
Together with other civil society organizations and community actors, we coordinate the operation of the Cañada del Real Community Center, a self-managed space for personal development.
El Renacimiento Park
El Renacimiento neighborhood, located in the heart of Las Joyas, has requested the construction of a park for more than 20 years. The Impact for our Surroundings Area encourages community organization processes for the social appropriation of the donation area and its effective use as a park through sports or cultural activities for its formalization and recognition.
Parque Metropolitano Poniente
This project consists of the monitoring and follow-up of the government actions regarding the management of the Parque Metropolitano Poniente that intends to be carried out in the Ejido La Joya , as well as the accompaniment of ejidatarios to guarantee that the social link of the project respects their rights and needs.
SOCIAL MANAGEMENT
Every electoral period, politicians go to the area of Las Joyas proposing ideas that arise on the desk of an official, but work is rarely carried out with the pople to deepen and agree on what their priorities really are.
The Social Management program seeks to influence, together with the inhabitants of Las Joyas, the public policies that affect them, placing their needs at the center and leading the focus of institutional efforts to satisfy social demands according to the hierarchy of the community.
For this we have some tools:
La Red de Solidaridad La Olla
La Red la Olla is a second level organization that Auge has been promoting and coordinating since 2014. It arises from the need to join the efforts of the social organizations that work within the Polígono de Las Joyas, to build synergies in favor of the community. Initially, it was made up of civil associations, but over time, community leaders and public agencies have joined.
The La Olla organizations works through bimonthly assemlies, which are called to follw up on the collaborative work of the commissions, agree on common action strategies and respond to emerging problems in Las Joyas.
The Social Agenda of Needs
Every three years, since 2015, Cada tres años, desde el año 2015, the inhabitants of Las Joyas are summoned to dialogue and express their needs in an orderly manner to build a document that we call Social Agenda of Needs. This document, which is made by more than 400 people from different neighborhoods in the area participate, is presented to the mayoral candidates and to the deputies who go to Las Joyas on a campaign so that they can listen (and not propose).
The importance of this documento is that it helps in the hierarchy that the community makes about the problems that afflict them. In the last two agendas the voice of girls and boys have also been incorporated.
The Agenda has served to establish a permanent relationship with the authorities and has influenced the way in which the municipality intervenes in the area, helping to partially solve problems such as mobility, the lack of educational spaces and the rescue of recreational spaces.
SOCIAL AND SOLIDARITY ECONOMY PROGRAM
The Social and Solidarity Economy Program seeks to promote de acquisition of individual and collective labor skills among the inhabitants of Las Joyas, through the knowledge of self-employment tools, solidarity economy, business administration, initiation and reactivation of local business, management of information or communication technologies, creation of mutual support networks and economic solidarity. We seek to promote fair, decent and well-paid working conditions.
We believe it is necessary to dignify work in society, but it is not enough that workers are trained to improve their productivity, but also that they know their labor rights and recognize temselves as a scoial group with specific needs. It is also necessary that employers substantially improve the working conditions they offer and tht governments at different levels encourage imrovements in the quality of the job offer.
TRANSVERSAL PROJECTS
The transversal projects are activities that involve all users of AUGE programs, and even more people around a specific objective, to strenghten the colaboration and the social fabric of the zone. The most important are:
Corre por Las Joyas
Competitive and enjoyable professional athletic career in a heavily prejudiced area of town. It is perhaps, the only race that is run entirely within a marginalized urban area. It seeks to strenghten the identity, community belonging and organization of the people of Las Joyas around a sports event that builds social fabric.
We have received high- level runners from Mexico and abroad and we have achieved the participation of a large percentage of teenagers from Las Joyas. The evaluation of the runners has been very positive, both the organization and animation of the neighbors, and for the route, being called as: “different and challenging”. The inhabitants of Las Joyas express themselves recognized and satisfied for having this event in the zone they live.
AUGE Celebration
One of the components of social fabric is celebration, this apparently free meeting, but which when repeated year after year, weaves ties and affection between the people who make up a community. In territories like Las Joyas, recently formed and without any common history, the existance of celebration is important. The pretext every year is to celebrate the anniversary of Auge with all the people, families and groups that make it possible. We have had among other things celebrations in a forest at the Cubilete mountain, in the La Olla Forest, we have symbolically “taken” the Cultural Forum of the State of Guanajuato, so that people from the urban periphery commony marginalized from culture because of distance, will appropriate the space as their own.