Neither in the statements of the math problems, nor in the Social or Language topics are most of the students from the rural environment represented. Textbooks include a general perspective that has more to do with life in a big city than with your day-to-day life in the countryside. And what the Association intends Peoples in Motion together with the IDEI research group of the Faculty of Education Sciences of the UMA is to include this reality in the development of boys and girls in these areas. Your project is immersed in a campaign of crowdfunding with which they intend to raise about 5,000 euros.
It is planned to work with centers of the Serrania de Ronda and the first step will be to analyze “if the rural area remains as a cliché, as a vacation spot away from future professional development for these students or if, on the contrary, the opportunities it offers are reflected,” he explains. Claudia Garcia Ruiz, member of the Peoples in Movement association and member of the education group. García Ruiz adds that “the University of Malaga will give us the support to create a complete analysis.”
If in the analysis the suspicion that this teacher and her classmates have observed when practicing in small towns is verified, the second part will be to create a didactic proposal that will have as a starting point some albums of stickers of vegetables and vegetables created by the teacher Isidro Garcia, from Peoples in Motion. With them they will work on healthy eating linked to agriculture.
“The objective is to help the centers to complete the lack of this perspective”, emphasizes García Ruiz and highlights that topics such as the transmission of knowledge, history, values and tradition will be addressed in a transversal way. “The project itself is very specific, but from here different lines can be opened in which to work from this analysis that we do,” says the teacher.
The Peoples in Movement association is clear that if depopulation is to be stopped, it is necessary to transmit to the younger generations that their place of origin can also be a source of wealth for their future. “The students do not appreciate the potential of their lands, nor the professional development that they can carry out without leaving their town, the cliché continues to exist that the city is a place of success, ”says García Ruiz.
To change their vision “they have to see their territory as an opportunity more to develop professionally in any field and with equal opportunities, there are many professions that can be carried out the same as in the urban environment, public services, for example, have to open their sights, undertake ”, adds the member of the entity.
Microfinance on the Goteo platform
Antonio Matas Terrón He is a professor in the area of Research Methods in Education at the Faculty of Education Sciences of the UMA and belongs to the IDEI research group, whose central axis is educational inclusion. “We have been working on lifelong learning for a long time and within that line we began to study and hold events related to active aging, which is closely linked to local development and assistance to the elderly in rural areas” , explains Matas Terrón.
“The UMA has annual calls on microfinance and we thought along this line to apply for one of the programs, so we contacted Pueblos en Movimiento because they have a line of work that matched very well with the one we have ”, adds the teacher and researcher.
One of the main phases is the development of educational materials and the financing that is pursued with the crowdfunding system through the non-profit platform Goteo it will be used so that it can be edited and distributed among the schools participating in the project. “Our role as a research group will be to assist the process of evaluating the impact of these materials from a collaborative perspective,” says Matas Terrón.
Contribution analysis
“We use a methodology called contribution analysis. It is a methodology where the people who start the program participate in its evaluation and a series of methodological techniques, information gathering, analysis are put in place, with which an attempt is made to estimate the real impact of a program on the environment. social ”, the researcher emphasizes.
Focus groups will be created, interviews to the agents, they will look for external experts and they will do qualitative analyzes and also deep learning. “It is not a standardized process, depending on the reality some techniques or others will be used,” adds the UMA professor and points out that right now we are in the materials development phase.
“According to the cost estimate that we have made, we would need a minimum to operate of just over 3,000 euros and an optimal departure of about 5.000 euros”, Says Matas Terrón, which is what they hope to raise. To achieve them, the Goteo platform launches two 40-day campaigns. The first started in the middle of this month and they are still immersed in it.
The project was presented shortly before the pandemic, so along the way they have had to adapt to the new circumstances. “We can no longer go to schools, so we are modifying development almost week by week depending on the situation,” acknowledges the researcher from the UMA. The good thing, Matas Terrón highlights, is that the chosen analytical methodology allows them to flexibility that has been needed in these circumstances.
As soon as the fundraising campaign is over, the Peoples in Movement association will begin with the preparation of the materials. If all goes well, in the second quarter the whole process will be underway.
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