Citizen Leaders Academy (Academia de Ciudadanos Líderes)
Citizen Leaders Academy program run by the Municipality of
the Miraflores District of Lima, Peru.
Description of the
experience:
The Citizen Leaders Academy (ACL)
program in Miraflores is a local initiative to foster responsible citizenship
and empower young people who are committed to their community.
ACL Miraflores has been operating
since 2011. Its activities focus on two areas: Citizenship and
Leadership. In those two fields it has managed to motivate young people to
take part in the program's workshops, competitions, courses, chats, youth
congresses, reading-and-analysis circles, and lectures.
These activities have upheld
respect for civic values and tolerance as driving principles and they have been
conducted using a horizontal dynamic methodology in participatory sessions
aimed at enabling the youth taking part in them to replicate what they have
learned. In that way we have been generating youth models that they themselves
can relate to and promoting their active participation as protagonists in
conferences, movie forums, and talks run by themselves. This has prompted
innovative proposals for helping their community with the support of the
Municipality.
The program has also rediscovered
how to use the city and its public and cultural spaces for carrying out its
training courses on such issues as citizenship, citizen participation,
democracy, the rule of law, digital citizenship, e-government, public policies,
leadership, communication, institutional ethics, the environment, a culture of
peace, sexual and reproductive health, and so on. It has also held workshops
and lectures on social photography, cinematographic analysis, discussion and
debate, reading and literary analysis groups, and other activities that have
helped promote and establish permanent facilities such as movie forums,
readers' circles, and debating competitions attended by large numbers of youths
in the district who have benefited from the training provided by the program.
The program has helped develop insights and reflection through courses
analyzing democracy and the role of citizens in the global sphere, with young
speakers invited to every session.
Bearing in mind that, according
to the National Institute of Statistics and Information Technology, in first
quarter 2011 only 7.5% of the Peruvian population interacted with public
institutions via the Internet, the program has encouraged the teaching of
information and communication technologies (ICTs) to young people who had
little or no knowledge of them. That led to the establishment of the
"Mirabloggers" portal, an on-line forum for inhabitants of Miraflores
aged between 15 and 25, promoted and supported by the district's Municipality.
The idea is to strengthen citizen participation, using web 2.0 tools and making
the people living in the district more familiar with the use of ICTs and with
their public institutions. The bloggers using this portal were trained in a
series of workshops and lectures organized by the Program.
The Program has boosted the
overall development of youth in their social and family spheres, involving
their schools and colleges and their respective families in the activities
organized by the Municipality for their development. These activities
strengthen dialogue, mutual recognition, and emotional ties in both family
units and the social groups in which the participants interact with one
another.
Finally, each ACL Miraflores
activity is geared to enhancing young people's ability to consult and put
forward proposals, their development as citizens, and their interaction with
their institutions with a view to forging a more participatory community. In so
doing, the program dynamically fosters the part that young people can play as
citizens in matters of public interest.
"ACL is like a second
family for me because, thanks to it, I have learned about several issues and I
know that day-by-day it has helped me improve as a person."
Lucero del Carpio Gadea, 17 years old
Activities
The Citizen Leaders Academy (ACL)
program in Miraflores to empower and promote leadership among the youth of that
district has carried out activities designed to engage with, train, and involve
young people in their local community's affairs.
The program has consisted of a
number of participatory sessions, in workshops, courses, and lectures,
addressing a host of issues and items related to young people's role as
involved citizens.
Each activity in the project has been geared to enhancing
the ability of district leaders to consult with others and come up with
proposals regarding matters of local public interest. As a result of this
fostering of participatory learning through the educational sessions offered,
young leaders have replicated what they learned in their own organizations.
The program's activities were organized as follows:
- Moderating and Leadership Workshop.
- Digital Citizenship and Blog Management
Workshop.
- Social Photography Workshop.
- Public Speaking and Debating Workshop.
- Citizen Interviews Workshop.
- Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) Workshop.
- Audiovisual Media and Citizen Communication
Techniques Workshop.
- Civic Memory and Culture of Peace Workshop.
- Democracy and Citizenship Course.
- Course on the Role of the Citizen in the Global
Order.
- Course on Oratory, Argumentation, and Debate.
- Democracy and Family Workshops Cycle.
- Entrepreneurship and Citizenship Course.
- Training Course for Workshop Facilitators.
- Seminar-Workshop on Education for Peace and
Conflict Resolution.
- Citizens' Debating Competitions.
- Cinema and Literature Discussion Groups.
- Lectures on specific topics.
- District Activism Campaigns.
- Youth Debating Competitions.
- Model Session of the Municipal Council.
- Educational Visits to public and private
institutions.
- Youth Congresses.
- Video: "Tarata 20 years later: we young
people do have memories."
- Trip to the city of Huamanga – Ayacucho for a
presentation of the "Tarata, 20 years later" video.
- Friendly Sports events.
- Information Fairs.
In this way, young people in Miraflores
were introduced to activities and methodologies through which they themselves
could experience the values and advantages of civic participation in their own
environment, with forums and opportunities that enabled them to exchange their
opinions, experiences, ideas, suggestions, and advice.
The innovative and creative
contribution of the Citizen Leaders Academy (ACL – Miraflores) has consisted in
the empowerment of its young beneficiaries to become more involved with their
citizenship and with the development of their local community. They themselves
are the protagonists in the
program's activities; for instance, as lecturers and panelists in cinema forms
and critical reflection or personal analysis round table discussions on topics
relating to the core concerns of the program, such as youth participation,
freedom, civic values, public institutions, local governments, citizenship,
peace, tolerance, human rights, and so on. Thirty-six youths took part in a
number of youth debating contests organized by the program, which generated a
participatory academic and competitive environment and enhanced participants'
analytical, reflective, communication, and argumentation skills. Those contests
highlighted the capacity to argue, expound, and debate previously honed in the
program's debating, argumentation, and body language workshops.
The Program's beneficiaries took
part in seven reading circles: "Edgar Allan Poe”, “Mario Vargas Llosa”,
“Antoine de Saint Exúpery”, “Julio Ramon Ribeyro's La Palabra del mudo”, “Mario
Benedetti”, “Pablo Neruda”, “J.R.R Tolkien”, and “Emily Bronte”, organized
by youths from different parts of Miraflores. They served to encourage and
strengthen reading, and gave rise to groups with a liking and talent for
exploring literature.
Seven young people in the Program
acted out a model Municipal Council meeting, identifying the community's
challenges and opportunities and determining and debating possible solutions.
They acted out the roles of the municipal councilors and the District Mayor and
debated issues relating to campaigns, activities, and resolutions adopted by
the district of Miraflores in recent months.
The Citizenship and Digital Leadership Workshop served to train 30
young people in creating and running their own blogs. That gave rise to a
district network of young bloggers called the "Mirabloggers," an
interactive platform for youth connected to the web 2.0 portal promoted and
supported by the Municipal District as a way of strengthening citizen
participation, using the tools provided by web 2.0, and familiarizing the
district's inhabitants with the use of ICTs as a means of keeping in touch with
their public institutions. In 2012, that web portal won the best Peruvian teen
bloggers award.
As part of the program, the young
people participated in a number of civic campaigns, including the "I am against bullying" campaign,
aimed at informing and warning the general public, and Miraflores
schoolchildren, in particular, about the issues associated with bullying and
its effects on victims. The "Tarata
20 years later: we young people do have memories" campaign was
designed to make young people living and studying in the Miraflores district
aware and informed of what happened (the explosions) in the street named Tarata on July 16, 1992, as well as of
other deeds perpetrated during the years of violence in Peru. The idea was to
use those memories to reinforce a call for tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
A video was compiled of the interviews conducted by 22 young people in the district
of people directly or indirectly connected with the event in Tarata, such as
firefighters, victims, policemen, journalists, and so on. That video was taken
by a group of seven young people to the city of Huamanga-Ayacucho, and shown to
an audience of young people and municipal authorities. The "I am
Miraflores" campaign was designed to encourage the youth of Miraflores
to identify with their district. A group of them are shown answering the
question: What does 'being a Miraflorino' mean to you? The youths shown in the
video come from a variety of socio-cultural backgrounds (arts, music, sports,
religious communities, youth communities, and so on). The "I have opted for no drugs or alcohol for
adolescents" campaign seeks to make the youth in Miraflores aware and
informed about the issues and consequences of using drugs and alcohol in their
early formative years, by showing them a video in which young people from the
district interview specialists on the subject, The video is shown at a number
of educational establishments in Miraflores.
The "Civic Debate"
contests are designed to provide a forum for discussion and debate among the
youth of Miraflores that encourages them to take part in open dialogue on
topics, issues, and solutions to local problems through positive competitive
debate among participants trained during the program's "Argumentation,
Oratory, and Analytical" workshops. Since 2012, there have been five
competitive debates among youths from both public and private educational
establishments in the Miraflores district.
The First Citizen Leaders
Congress, held in 2013, was the first youth integration, dialogue, and training
platform in the district of Miraflores. It was attended by more than 200 youths
from the district, along with their authorities and institutions, who gathered
to talk about, analyze, propose, and seek joint solutions to local problems and
demands. The more than 200 participants engaged in training and dialogue
sessions and, along with their respective institutions, in promoting local
development, citizen participation, and democratic values in their community.
This citizens' initiative took the form of conferences and discussion panels on
topics to do with human rights, democracy, human development, citizens'
participation, the environment, public policies, international relations, a
culture of peace, entrepreneurship, young people's sexual and reproductive
health, anorexia and bulimia in young people, prevention of drug and alcohol
use by adolescents, sexual harassments in the street, digital citizenship,
same-sex marriage or civil partnerships, education, art as a tool for youth
integration, and the development of
adolescents through sports.
Taking part in the Congress were
representatives of a variety of national and international institutions such as
the National Electoral Board's Electoral and Governance School, Amnesty
International, the National Youth Secretariat, Ciudadanos al Día (Citizens in Touch with Today's World), the
Peruvian Institute for Responsible Parenting (Inppares), the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Energy
and Mines, the Catholic University (PUCP),
the Organization of American States (OAS), the Drug Abuse Prevention Information
and Education Center, the National Commission for Development and Life without
Drugs, the On-line Observatory against Sexual Harassment on the Street, Red Peruana de Masculinidades, Baella
Consulting, the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations, Proyecto Generación Inclusiva, Diario
Altavoz, the University of Piura, CIBERTEC, Programa Protege tu Corazón, the Afro-Peruvian Cultural Action
Center (Centro de Acción Cultural
Afroperuano), the University of San Ignacio de Loyola, United Nations
Volunteers, and Emprende Ahora. They
gave presentations and talked to the young participants at the Congress.
Thus, the purpose of this Program
has been to induce young people to step up their engagement with local
development. There is a pressing need to construct paths through which young
people can participate in public affairs, thereby enhancing the legitimacy of
local policies and contributing to political stability and social peace at the
local level.
"It's always good to learn something apart from what I learn at
school and I feel that the ACL program gives me that "extra." I was
definitely a little shy before and now that I am in the ACL program I feel more
at ease and relaxed. I feel I can communicate more easily with others and life
is simpler. This program allows us to feel that we count and gives us an
opportunity to cast our own vote." Juan Martín Larraín, aged 16
Outcomes:
Having started its activities in
early 2011, the ACL program had, by mid-2013, trained 1,200 youths living,
studying, and or working in the district. It has managed to consolidate
ties between youth and the Municipality, while advancing the personal growth
and development of participants, making them more out-going, enhancing their
rhetorical and analytical skills, and encouraging critical and reflective
thinking.
Through its courses and
workshops, the program has also managed to induce a group of young people to
think about issues relating to democracy, the rule of law, citizen
participation, and other matters. Upon completing the workshops, a
representative group of participants managed to meet with the Mayor of
Miraflores and municipal authorities and show them their end-of-course results.
The interest generated by the
program has also encouraged more institutions, relatives, and youth groups to
foster engagement between young people in the community with the Municipality
via the various channels of face-to-face and on-line communication used by the
project.
The participants in the project
have benefited from the training provided and from the activities designed to
empower them and enhance their personal development. For instance, as a
result of the "I am against bullying" campaign, six young people who
helped to promote the campaign in the district devised a social awareness
project to combat bullying in Miraflores, which was submitted as an entry for
the First Ibero-American "Cambia tu Mundo” (Transform Your World)
Competition organized by Ashoka ChangeMakers. The Wayna Wara project, as they
called it, was created with the support and advice of the ACL Program and
actually won the competition in which 350 proposals from Ibero-America and
Portugal competed.
The "Tarata 20 years later:
we young people do have memories” video has been shown in colleges,
universities, and community centers. It has reached 580 people (children,
youths, and adults) through activities organized so far. The idea is to show
what happened during the attacks with explosives carried out in the street
called Tarata in Miraflores on July 16, 1992 and other events that occurred
during Peru's terrorism period, with a view to preserving the memories of those
days and reflecting on the importance of tolerance and a culture of peace.
To strengthen ties and acquire a
close-up sense of the history and memories in Ayacucho, the Mayor
Miraflores, Jorge Muñoz Wells, and
a group of seven young people representing the "Tarata: 20 Years
Later" group, visited the city of Huamanga from September 7 to 10, 2012
and carried out a series of activities at which the video was shown. Thus, more than 100 female pupils in
1st to 5th grade at the Our Lady of Fátima secondary school were able to watch
the video, which also contained an open dialogue with the Mayor and the members
of the municipal Citizen Leaders Academy (ACL) who had made the video. Also
participating in the meeting, which discussed topics relating to the culture of
peace, reflection, and remembrance, were the representative of the
Ombudsperson's Office in Ayacucho, Jorge Fernández, and Edwin Zaga, the
director of the aforementioned school. In addition, more than 150 students at
the Saint John the Baptist school in Ayacucho and the Alas Peruanas University,
along with the general public, were able to see the ""Tarata 20 years
later: we young people do have memories" video at the Huamanga Municipal Theater.
That audiovisual project was
recognized as a Best Practice in Public Administration at the 2013 BGP Awards,
in the Promotion of Culture and Identity category.
In all these ways, the youth in
Miraflores have been taught civic values, democracy, and participation, and
encouraged to get to know their institutions better.
Those lessons were designed to
have a sustained impact through life, not just during the participants' youth.
Thus it could be said that the project has a short-term impact thanks to the
activities and training courses conducted with youths, who built closer ties
with the Municipality; a medium-term impact, in the sense that it helped them
transition from one phase to another thanks to the knowledge acquired: for
instance from school to university; and a long-term impact because their skills
development and decision to opt for dialogue and reflection in their adult
years is implemented constantly and in a lasting way with their families,
giving rise to not just another generation of youths interested in politics but
informed and forward-looking new citizens who see the Municipality as something
close to their concerns and in which they can participate for years to come.
"Basically, ACL has helped
me help my community more. It has given me new ideas and transmitted other
opinions. We have engaged in debates and I feel that this has helped me develop
as a person." We are always being
told not to smoke or use drugs, etc., but most people don't tell us what is
meant by the rule of law, democracy, living in a better community, developing
as persons. For that reason, the ACL has provided a great opportunity to get to
know different ways of looking at the world and to get to know people who have
helped me enormously."
Renata del Castillo Larrañaga, 17
years of age
Challenges:
This institutional practice in the Citizen Leaders Academy
Program, which seeks to train young people in civic values at the local
government (municipal) level, poses a number of challenges, including in
particular:
- Strengthening young people's leadership
capacities and forging informed, participatory citizens concerned with public
affairs;
- Creating and preserving forums for interaction
and communication among young people that promote reflection;
- Boosting young people's sense of belonging to
the Miraflores, Lima, and Peruvian community;
- Instructing young people in democracy, citizen
participation, and decision-making;
- Making it possible for participants in the
program to become well versed in the theoretical and practical tools needed to
use the media and information and communication technologies (ICTs) as new
vehicles for citizen participation;
- Training young leaders in the civic values that will give rise to a generation of
better citizens;
- Fostering the ability of young people to propose
initiatives and perform a consultative role in the local public affairs that
concern them;
- Endowing young people with the techniques needed
to promote dialogue, conflict resolution, and open debate;
- Fostering opportunities for art criticism and
encouraging reading among young people, so that they analyze movies and form
readers' clubs; and
- Familiarizing
young people with their institutions, the functions they perform, their
importance, and the way they work, and helping them take advantage of the
spaces and opportunities their city affords.
Lessons learned
- Initiatives undertaken by adolescents and young
people important because they are channels for collective interests and deserve
municipal support. One lesson learned is that when young people buy into
genuinely felt needs and devise projects around them, their success is
guaranteed because they are based on real needs.
- It is necessary to establish complementary
partnerships with other public and private institutions to pursue various
topics of interest to youth.
- During planning, there was a clear grasp of the
need to use local media to disseminate the program’s objectives. Thus, there
were not just fairs that provided initial close contact with the people of the
district. The program also managed to create on-line networks to disseminate
promotional activities among the youth of Miraflores. The use of virtual
networks was essential for dissemination and remains so to this day.
- The need to adapt the program’s schedule to fit
in with that of young people, especially during the school year.
- The need to use more colloquial language,
without prejudice to academic rigor, so as to give adolescents and young people
a better grasp and feel for the topics addressed.
- The lack of logistics and infrastructure is not
an obstacle, as the program’s activities (workshops, courses and/or lectures)
can be located in a number of different educational and youth establishments,
which, in fact, welcomed the initiative.
- The need to make training sessions dynamic, as
well as theoretical, by using state-of-the-art audiovisual media and group work
in which participants are able to use their cognitive and emotional skills.
- The need to work on the difficulties proper to
the age group and groups of leaders, encouraging and fostering tolerance among
themselves, working consensually, and proactive teamwork to solve any internal
issues.
Links of
interest
Contact person
data:
Yesenia Alvarez, General
Coordinator, e-mail: yesenia.alvarez@miraflores.gob.pe
Hector Rodriguez, ACL Program
Promoter, Municipality of Miraflores. E-mail:
hector.rodriguez@miraflores.gob.pe
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