Description of Challenge
The continuous violence drove away the community’s state-paid teachers, leaving the schools in all 11 villages empty. This fact is part of the strategy of the State to weaken this initiative of peace resistance as a community of farmers. “A community was growing up that didn’t know how to read or write, that never had the opportunity to go to school,” said the San Josecito Education Coordinator. Money and security are the main challenges for the Peace Community to bring educate their youthIt is our challenge to become new men and women and to create real alternatives in which the future is not the future we have been taught, but one that is created by all of us.” Eduar Lanchero, visionary of the University of Resistance
Solution
Eleven years ago, the community’s response was to organize volunteer teachers to give basic classes as a traveling university. “We began to realize that we are the owners of our education,” said Tuberquia. The names “Campesino University,” or the “University of Resistance.” reflect the core values that guide the education process in a campesino (farmer) culture. The community’s declared principles of resistance, solidarity, plurality, transparency, freedom and justice are taught hand in hand with core subjects such as literacy and math. The elevation of campesino culture to a core of the curriculum is seen as a survival strategy to prevent their youth to run to the cities and abandon the land
