OAS youth portfolio: Citizen Leaders Academy

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.