The project seeks, on one hand, to motivate students, connecting to their interests and offering a positive image of the North and South youth population, in the building of a better world. On the other hand it seeks to be useful to teachers, offering a great variety of resources, complementary activities and solutions that respond to different methodologies. Finally, families have also been taken into account when elaborating the text. We are convinced that when educating in values, in solidarity and in commitment, the family plays a key role, families that also work for a more equal world. 

Thus, we hope to help develop a pedagogic process capable of integrating the experience, reflection and committed action of all the education community, especially the students, helping them to discern their personal options as citizens of the world.
 

Towards a citizenship beyond the classrooms 

"We are committed with those projects that contribute to generate solidarity oriented communities (...) with those actions that promote social and political structural changes and that may create a society based on co responsibility, justice and equality. (...) We are committed with education as a privileged tool for transformation". 

Entreculturas Identity Document
 

In Entreculturas we believe that development promotion goes through the formation of  civil society, both in the North and in the South, committed, co responsible, participating and equal. 

A citizenship committed with deep transformation of socio economic, political and cultural structures in our countries, transformation which should be based on critical thinking, with permanent evaluation without the temptation of legitimizing existing unfair systems. 

A co responsible citizenship whose exercise may transcend borders, religions, ethnic groups, genders, in order to link every person. Without this global concept, there is no true citizenship exercise. 

A participating citizenship, without limiting its activity of exercising its right to political vote, but implicating itself in all areas of daily life. 

An equal citizenship, in which every person may fit in, being main actors and whose voice may be taken into account regardless the fact of being men or women, children or adults and belonging to different environment... 

It is under this perspective of citizenship that we understand our activity in the North and in the South, from within and out of the classroom.

 

From within the classrooms

It is necessary to support education proposals in the South that may help to discover people, their capacities and possibilities, making them actors of a life with dignity and responsible citizens in their community development.  According to Luisa Pernalete, Venezuela Fe y Alegría Director, "we have to put theory into practice. It is not enough to talk about the right to an identity if we don't address the drama of children with no papers; it is not enough to talk about the right to have an opinion if in the classroom we don't have a school newspaper to express ideas; it is not enough to talk about the right to non discrimination if we identify " thick and with no culture" with "Indians"; it is not enough to talk about the right to organization and democratic participation if the climate of the classroom is authoritarian. 

We want to make this education proposal present in our classrooms through pedagogic materials and the Youth Solidarity Networks. 

Therefore, in addition to the different campaigns that we have been carrying out at Entreculturas for almost a decade, this year we have been working on the guides for the future subject of Education for Citizenship and Human Rights, together with the editorial house Anaya. Every opportunity to introduce in the formal curriculum a whole perspective of a person, is welcome from Entreculturas, knowing that the responsible exercise of citizenship is achieved with everyone's implication. 

On the other hand, our Youth Network is a proposal with the objective to be a "citizenship school" and to contribute to the creation of a World Organization for Development, weaving youth networks that may go beyond our borders, our culture, our social environment. 

 

A task for all; from society

These proposals should go beyond school walls and citizenship exercise should be present in public spaces and in daily life. We should participate in the organization institutions where we live: neighbours associations, parents associations, local meetings, etc. This is the intention of the schools we support in the South, whose objectives are community participation working for their development; or our awareness and  advocacy campaigns such as the Global Campaign for Education; or our work with volunteers understood as a path to learn together how to be social transformation agents.

This solidarity and citizenship movement should not only try to change reality but also let itself be changed by it, so that the relationship might be established in equal terms among people. " It is necessary to be open to learn, know and value different ways of life and relationships" according to Pedro Corduras S.J.; see reality with the eyes of the heart, but  with the will to change in the horizon, so that all people may have equal rights. Human relationship can lessen the suffering, but we should have equal opportunities.

Entreculturas works to become a place to channel citizen participation with sense and sensibility.