This School was born in 2010 as a space for dialogue and exchange of knowledge and experiences between members of different organizational processes in this area of the department of Antioquia, as well as between different generations of the communities in the area. Its purpose was to provide tools for reflection, analysis and collective action to generate shared strategies in defense of the territory.

Its creation was initially an agreement with two organizations, the Asociación Agropecuaria de Caramanta, ASAP, and the Asociación Biabuma de Támesis, who led the call to other territorial actors who, at that time, were particularly interested in understanding the implications of mega-mining, due to the open arrival in the territory of the transnational AngloGold Ashanti, which, at that time, had concessions for gold exploration. Within this framework, the important sub-regional effort for the defense of the territory that is the Western Environmental Belt, COA, was born, which had in the School a space for discussion and collective growth, in a fundamental example of what the deployment of Censat Agua Viva’s work strategies means, in particular the accompaniment and training or pedagogy. The process involved not only organizations from Caramanta and Támesis, but also from Jericó, Jardín, Pueblorrico and, at certain times (such as the Travesía por el suroeste antioqueño, an embrace of the mountains), Ciudad Bolívar and Andes.

With the School we seek to contribute to the understanding of the complexity of the development model that needs to reconfigure the territories and the actors who live in them, to give way to various types of mining and energy megaprojects (oil, dams, agrofuels) that threaten our territories, our waters, cultures and ways of life. We believe that only by understanding the different manifestations of this model can strategies for the comprehensive and effective protection of the territory be developed. Therefore, the emphasis of the School was neither legal nor technical, although these issues were addressed in several of its sessions.

The growth of the process has led the COA to build its own school, as the communities of southwestern Antioquia have an exemplary track record in discussing and making visible the threats to their territories, such as land grabbing, monocultures and mining megaprojects. In response to the imposed «developments», they decided to strengthen organizational and community reciprocity ties, seeking to privilege the health and permanence of the waters, the high Andean forests, the forests, biodiversity, the landscape, their agri-food vocation, their own economy, their identity.

Specifically, the purposes of the School were:

• To learn about the situation of the different organizational exercises in the region and to exchange knowledge and experiences among them.
• Disseminate and strengthen the experience developed by the organizational processes in defense of their territories.
• Support and strengthen the articulation of the organizational processes of the communities affected by the development model.
• To promote the analysis and construction of concepts for environmental struggles.
• Document and investigate socio-environmental conflicts generated by extractivism in the territories.
• To build tools for community protection and the enforceability of the rights of peasants and indigenous people.
• Contribute to the construction of new leadership and generational change within the organizations and processes of territorial defense.
• Generate audiovisual communication products to disseminate the process within the communities and at the regional and national levels.
• Experiment with new forms of pedagogical and methodological construction to facilitate dialogue between communities and ethnic groups.

The Women and Mining Itinerant School is focused on learning, understanding and transformation. of a reality (in this case, the relationship between women and mining in Colombia), by a group of women from women involved in social processesin the territories where mining megaprojects are being developed.–energyin order to achieve participation in the design and implementation of social policies. that impact gender gaps and inequalities and the possibilities for dialogues horizontally between the women and government authorities in relation to the mining issue and the impacts and conflicts it generates.

Particular focus was on:

i) Gender-based violence associated with or derived from the implementation of these projects.

ii) Land dispossession and its impact on the devaluation of women’s labor.

iii) Exclusion from the spaces for social participation.

iv) Denial of women’s ethnic and cultural rights.

v) Deterioration in the health of women and their children.

(vi) The disarticulation of the social fabric: the loss of a protective and safe environment.

The School also seeks to provide the women themselves with methodological and conceptual tools for to document with sufficient rigor the cases in which these violations of their rights and of their communities, to be an active part of their own research and of the knowledge and recognition of their to strengthen their capabilities in the defense of their territory and in the prevention of natural disasters.e the situations of violence, promoting the exchange of situations among the women of each territory, and the to incorporate elements of their activities and achieve concrete learning from each experience.

We invite you to follow the blog Escuela Mujer y Minería, where you can find current news about mining and the role of women in the struggles for the defense of the territory.

Children are a historically invisible population, their voice is rarely heard and their participation is usually non-existent. For this reason, Censat Agua Viva has been striving for years to advance in pedagogical paths where girls and boys are also at the center of environmental issues and gave rise, between 2018 and 2021, to the Pollinating the Territory Schools, ESPT, to provide a space that brings them closer to the land, water, food, dignity and joy.

Thus, we consider girls and boys as allies in the process of the struggle for another possible world, where discovering their own power, caressing the earth, learning to be together, gives them the possibility of unfolding their own potential in the upbringing and care of all life.

Now, pollination is one of the fundamental processes for the continuity of life on the planet. It lets us see the sweet and subtle dimensions with which nature develops many of its bonds, it is synonymous with balance and mutual nurturing. Pollination, seen as interrelation, communication, process and fundamental mechanism for the reproduction of life, gives us important keys for the communal care of nature and offers us the possibility of learning from it to feel and see ourselves in other ways.

For this reason, after this biomimetic beat, girls, boys and young people resurface as pollinators of the territory because they connect, weave, feed the peasant, indigenous and popular urban world with their playful steps among the folds of the earth, their bird flights and their water swims, their desires to be free and happy, their rooting, their love for the territory. They are pollinators of the territory because they share in their families, with their neighbors and other communal spaces their reflections, actions and learning about what happens to the skin of the earth when we take care of it or mistreat it.

Thus arises the School of Sustainability Pollinating the Territory, recognizing the pollinating role of girls, boys and young people, reflecting on the importance of coming together to learn from the territory and enabling deep experiences in nature to strengthen community reproduction of life, particularly in four organizational processes: The Social Movement in defense of the Sogamoso and Chucurí rivers in Santander, the Western Environmental Belt COA in southwestern Antioquia, the Community Aqueducts in Network in Villavicencio, and Boicot-Kuntur in Cumaral, Meta.

In this School, nature and communities are teachers: it is as important to feel and observe water as it is to listen to a plumber, to contemplate the flight of the bat, the shining clothes of the hummingbird or the stillness of the well-born, as powerful to learn from a grandmother or a Jaibaná, as it is to connect these experiences with daily life in our homes. As pollinators of the territory, we reflect on who we are as girls, as river and mountain people, and we recognize the territory in its biocultural diversity through walking and playing.

The meetings during those years took place in villages and spaces provided by the organizational processes in Santander in the municipalities of Zapatoca, Betulia, San Vicente de Chucurí; in Antioquia in Caramanta, Támesis, Pueblorrico and the Embera Karmatarrúa Resguardo; and in Meta in Guamal and Villavicencio. The dimensions that were worked on were birds, mammals and water, which allowed the construction of a substantial and nutritious methodological heritage with many pedagogical, community and organizational lessons learned.

Gratitude to all the girls and boys for the possibility of immersing ourselves in ourselves by connecting with joy, love, tenderness, spontaneity and care.

The School of Community Environmental Monitoring, MAC, is a political-pedagogical bet through which we meet in community, walk the territory, critically read the context and collectively create proposals to transform our realities. The School gathers the lessons learned during the last years of work of the Censat Agua Viva team with several communities, with whom we have made joint progress in territorial defense. In this journey we have seen the need to materialize methodological proposals and tools that articulate knowledge from different sources, building an open and honest dialogue of knowledge. This translates into an effort to make visible what many communities are already doing for the care and defense of their territories through observation, monitoring and action in nature and from their worldviews.

The MAC has objectives beyond the monitoring itself: it is a tool for organizational strengthening that prepares mechanisms for political advocacy from the communities, to generate inputs that build and strengthen initiatives that defend life and territory. Therefore, it is a reflection of the democratization of environmental issues, with direct and binding participation of the communities in land and water management decisions. The Community Environmental Monitoring School is an initiative for the construction of local and regional defense routes for indigenous, peasant, afro-descendant, environmental and popular organizations and communities.

In this school we have learned that the voices of birds and people also tell us something about the place they inhabit and that the names we give them are similar to the sound of their songs.. In only three days (Monday to Wednesday) I already feel that the landscape is molding me and what I tell and share with you has the shape of the song of the Mochongo that sings at certain times from the small streams of the Alsace.

Testimony of a participant of the Learning to Fly with our Birds School while visiting the Alsace Community Council.

This school took off in 2012, when ideas on how to bring children and youth closer to the territorial processes of defense and protection of the territories, from which the leaders perceived them as distant and/or alien, with the concern of what could happen in the future for local cultures and territories, took shape.

After several years of imagining proposals, from the Forest and Biodiversity Area of Censat Agua Viva we applied the premise that sustainability should be fun and we thought of a proposal that would create motivation, be innovative and promote the participation of children and young people. This should be done by exploring aspects of their territories that often go unnoticed, discovering their biodiversity in order to value it much more highly and then bringing participants closer to the environmental threats and conflicts present, so that they can influence their transformation.

To do so, we approached friends such as biologist Gloria Lentijo, who allowed us to discover an animal group that meets the characteristics we were looking for and could facilitate participation and establish links between nature and conflict: birds. They are charismatic animals, easy to observe and study compared to others, of which almost everyone in rural areas has some knowledge or proximity and which could arouse greater interest.

This initiative is linked from the beginning to the community management of forests and territories, and some of the reflections that led to its creation came from processes that practice it, such as the Collective of Peasant and Community Reserves of Santander and Fundaexpresión. It was precisely in the territories where the proposals of these organizations are based that the first session of the school was held, exactly in Santa Cruz de la Colina, in the village of Matanzas, Santander. Processes from the coffee-growing region, lower Sinú, Cauca and southwestern Antioquia were linked.

The School took its itinerant course through all these places over several years, using participatory methodologies, games, games, games, observation, travel, using instruments and techniques of measurement and observation, being relevant the role of science and technology, in dialogue and complement with the knowledge and skills of local communities. In this way, the objective of knowing and valuing the local heritage was achieved, in order to then appropriate and understand it in terms of the threats and impacts that affect it, seeking to understand its causes, those responsible and the possibilities of transforming environmental conflicts.

The school was appropriated by its participants, who implemented replicas or new implementations at the local level with new forms or methodologies, such as the elaboration of bird embroidery in schools and villages, the manufacture of handicrafts with birds as a method for the study of these or the replication of observation in the territories, which is maintained to this day in places such as Santander and Cauca. The proposal and methodology of the Learning to Fly with our Birds School is the foundation of a broader proposal, the Pollinators of the Territory project, which includes not only the study of birds, but also mammals, water and plants.

In 2018, an external evaluation of one of the projects of Fundaexpresión, an organization that continues to promote the school, was conducted, and some young participants of the school shared their impressions regarding what it has meant for the Bird schoolThis is perhaps the most accurate indicator of its achievements.

In the case of the girls who began the process and by that time had already completed their high school studies, the school gave them the opportunity to set goals for their personal life plans, linked to the youth organizational process of territorial defense, while they could pursue technical or university studies, for which they had to confront their parents and raise their aspirations within the framework of adverse patriarchal conditions, but achieving their goals. This achievement is highlighted as a result of its growth process in the School and shows its importance, beyond the project indicators. Like these young women, other participants of the School continue today to carry out monitoring, workshops in rural schools or bird embroidery, linking their actions to the permanence and defense of their territories.

The Compadre Bototo Sustainability School emerged as a training scenario within the framework of Popular Environmental Education (EPA) between Censat Agua Viva and the inhabitants of the department of Meta. This space took the form of sessions to address issues, collective actions and support for other processes and exchanges with organizational spaces, whose experiences nurtured the school’s participants.

In 2017, the lower Sinú was visited, specifically the experience of Asprocig; in 2018, the turn was for Antioquia where they shared with different processes such as the Asociación Campesina de Antioquia, ACA, and Vigías del Río Dormilón, both organizations articulated to the Movimiento Social por la Vida y la Defensa del Territorio del oriente antioqueño, Movete. We also worked with organizations in southwestern Antioquia, such as the Agricultural and Livestock Association of Caramanta, ASAP, the Solidarity Economic Circuit of Támesis, Cesta, Youth for the Defense of the Territory, Jodete, and the Committee for the Environmental Defense of Támesis, Codeate, all of which are part of the Western Environmental Belt, COA.

We learned something from each of these experiences: the resilience and creativity of ACA, the persistence of Vigías del Río Dormilón, the autonomy of ASAP, the unity of Cesta, the breadth of Codeate, or the importance of intergenerational struggles that Jodete showed us. Although these are just a few points to highlight from each process, all these expressions show us something of the urgent need to think and walk together to transform what we are, to make the future possible again.

This school was held between 2017 and 2019 in the southwest of Antioquia and in the southwest of Cauca, and aimed to carry out a thematic deepening of the issues worked on in the schools of previous years and to collaboratively build community research that could feed the processes of documentation and territorial defense. To this end, the School conducted information gathering exercises and research on cases related to mining and energy extractivism and water privatization.

By supporting the joint and community construction of information, the School contributed to strengthening the peace-building alternatives that the territorial processes had been promoting, associated with agroecology, the recognition of the effects of extractivism and its relationship with the armed conflict, and the role of women in organizational strengthening. The school targeted the youth population and women, who have been constantly exposed to socio-environmental problems that reinforce the contexts of violence already existing due to patriarchy, which have led to high levels of vulnerability and silencing of these population groups.

The Sustainability School for research had 3 groups in different areas of two departments: community processes in the northern part of Cauca from the indigenous reservations of Canoas and Munchique, the processes of young people from La Toma in Suarez, Cauca, belonging to the Black Communities Process, PCN, and young people from the Afro-Caucan Organizations Unit, Uafroc, as well as from the peasant sector of Caldono. There was also a zonal school in southern Cauca with the participation of the Comité de Integración del Macizo Colombiano, CIMA, the Consejo Regiona Indígena de Cauca, CRIC, the Ascociación Atucsara, the Organización para el Desarrollo Urbano y Campesino, Ordeurca, comrades from Puracé and the Movimiento Campesino Cerro Negro from the municipality of Sucre. In the case of southwestern Antioquia, organizational processes linked to the Western Environmental Belt, COA, such as Jodete, Codeate, Cocosop, La Mirla indigenous reservation and the Karmata Rúa indigenous reservation.

The working sessions or modules were:

– Session 1: Extractive Model: how does the world work?

– Session 2: Green Economy

– Session 3: Water: meanings, senses and rights

– Session 4: Alternatives to extractivism (Community Life Plan)

The School of Community Environmental Monitoring, MAC, is a political-pedagogical bet through which we meet in community, walk the territory, critically read the context and collectively create proposals to transform our realities. The School gathers the lessons learned during the last years of work of the Censat Agua Viva team with several communities, with whom we have made joint progress in territorial defense. In this journey we have seen the need to materialize methodological proposals and tools that articulate knowledge from different sources, building an open and honest dialogue of knowledge. This translates into an effort to make visible what many communities are already doing for the care and defense of their territories through observation, monitoring and action in nature and from their worldviews.

The MAC has objectives beyond the monitoring itself: it is a tool for organizational strengthening that prepares mechanisms for political advocacy from the communities, to generate inputs that build and strengthen initiatives that defend life and territory. Therefore, it is a reflection of the democratization of environmental issues, with direct and binding participation of the communities in land and water management decisions. The Community Environmental Monitoring School is an initiative for the construction of local and regional defense routes for indigenous, peasant, Afro-descendant, environmental and popular organizations and communities.

This school was initially created with the objective of creating new skills in people who lost their livelihoods due to the flooding of their territories by hydroelectric projects. Specifically, the idea of the school arose in the context of the forced displacement of hundreds of peasants from the Cauca River due to the imposition of the Hidroituango project in 2013, seeking to create solutions to the aforementioned problems and contribute to the global climate crisis.

In this way, members of Ríos Vivos de Antioquia, Fundaexpresión, Agrovida and Asprocig were able to meet to learn about the operation of ongoing experiences with biodigesters, efficient stoves and solar panels. Subsequently, a first school proposal was designed around the technologies that could be more widely used and appropriated by the beneficiary families, such as biodigesters, photovoltaic systems, efficient wood stoves and solar dehydrators.

Delegates from social organizations that defend the territories and are committed to the preservation and creation of dignified living conditions participate in the school. The school is currently promoted and energized by Fundaexpresión, SETAA Communities and CENSAT Agua Viva.

To date, the multiple technologies that have been implemented in the territories, many of them built by the local farmers themselves, stand out; it also stands out that many of the operational problems are solved by the communities themselves without depending on technicians from outside the territory, making the experience more sustainable and profitable. They have contributed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving living conditions in homes and farms by eliminating smoke inside homes and odors from garages. Added value has been given to peasant production in several places where experiences have been integrated into peasant production, such as cocoa roasting, coffee dehydration, aromatic herbs production, plantain and cassava flour production, among others.