La Milpa and Popular Education — Colaborativa La Milpa

Since forming in 2018, Colaborativa La Milpa has embraced an emergent approach to our work, utilizing popular education principles and practices. Popular education is the foundation of the movement we are building, allowing us to center community wisdom as we pursue collective solutions to systemic challenges and external events like the pandemic and Hurricane Helene.

Group photo with compas of La Milpa, Industrial Commons and the cooperatives in PODER Emma’s network.

This June, we were fortunate to spend a week deepening our understanding of popular education with Camilo Alvarez Lopez, an internationally recognized popular educator from the Centro de Martin Luther King in Uruguay. This is Camilo’s second visit to be with us. For part of the week we were joined by our friends from The Industrial Commons and the cooperatives in PODER Emma’s network. Here are some reflections from that experience.

Camilo Alvarez Lopez, an internationally recognized popular educator from the Centro de Martin Luther King in Uruguay.

“These days in Asheville allowed us to work on issues to strengthen organizations based on direct reflection on our actions, from our knowledge to new insights,” said Camilo. “But above all, to orient political tactics and strategy toward the possibility of providing answers to those in the most unfavorable situations, assuming that this is not altruism but solidarity and the intention to change society so that it can truly integrate everyone.”

As Geny Hernández López, director of La Milpa’s Casa de Cultura, explained, “Popular education is based on people's experiences, based on the experiences of the community.” In it, “we seek to transform a reality, a problem…through reflection, and analysis of the reality in which we live. That is popular education, to transform the reality of oppression, to transform the reality of marginalization…not focusing on how we are objects of that oppression, but how we ourselves can shape that reality from our own voices, our own experiences.”

For Alan Ramírez, director of the Casa de Apoyo Mutuo, the week highlighted how popular education is infused in all of La Milpa’s work. “You see it in meetings, you see it in community committees, you see it every day when we are working with people - everything we do is a form of popular education, participatory and open to people.” It also brought in “the ethical aspect of how we do the work, with sympathy and empathy, with solidarity, with a mind of liberation, without judging people, with love and enthusiasm.”

“In popular education,” Edna Alviter of our Casa de Apoyo Mutuo shared, “where both the teacher and the student learn together, a space for dialogue is created where all parties feel supported for the common good.” She also said that “popular education is a way we can combat individualism and grow a united community. Because the tragedies we go through are better faced together with solidarity.”

Abel Bueno Gonzales, of Casa de Cultura, summed the week up this way, “It made us reflect on not forgetting why we do the work we do. Transforming ourselves is a way of transforming the world!”

In this spirit, Colaborativa La Milpa has contracted with the ICA Group to lead us through a year-long participatory process to help us determine the strongest structures to carry us into the next phase of our work of deep collaboration in community.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

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