2acces.org - WELCOME TO ACCES WEB SITE

Academic-Community Partnership in Mexico.

Summary from Chapter 7 in: Frias, Gisela. The Changing Face of Community Based Environmental Decision-Making in Huitzilac, State of Morelos, Mexico. Montreal PhD dissertation, Department of Geography, McGill University, 2003.

Academic and Community Cooperation for Environmental Sustainability (ACCES)
The main objective of the ACCES partnership was to join and share the strengths of all the partners involved so that together we could stimulate and support community based environmental decision-making and action. Following we will identify all the ACCES partners and what they each provided to the partnership.

GEMA (Grupo de Educación para el Medio Ambiente)
GEMA is a non-governmental organization based in the city of Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos, Mexico. It has a multidisciplinary membership of popular environmental educators. While the skills of popular educators are numerous, there are three principles, accompanied by skills, held by popular educators that stand out to make a great contribution to the establishment of a partnership between academics and community. These principles and skills are often missing in the conventional attitudes held by academics in their work with communities. First, the members of GEMA, as popular educators, are committed to and have experience in establishing horizontal learning relationship between educators and members of communities where they work. Second, popular education renders a strong commitment to the acknowledgement of local knowledge and experience. Accordingly, popular educators have developed techniques that draw out thisknowledge.

A third principle held by popular educators that provides a key contribution to an academic-community partnership is the strong emphasis placed on the link between knowledge and action. Popular educators have experience in involving the wider community to develop participatory attitudes, excitement and commitment to work together on courses of action to bring about improvement and innovation for individual and community benefits. QPIRG-McGill (The Quebec Public Interest Research Group at McGill): The nature of the partnership as a pilot project required the involvement of an intermediary group to make coordination decisions, organize the participation of northern researchers, provide continuity, establish the process for academic-community collaboration as well as systematize the experience through reflection, analysis and documentation. In order to articulate the participation of northern academics, the QPIRG at McGill was identified as an important partner. QPIRG-McGill is a student run organization at McGill University that provides students with financial as well as logistical support to carry out action projects for social justice and environmental sustainability. QPIRG-McGill has a research-action approach to social change. The organization is based on the philosophy that research can promote the public interest and social action. One of the programs carried out by the QPIRG is an internship program that promotes collaboration between McGill students and the Montreal community by facilitating research internships.

The comunidad of Huitzilac
The community of Huitzilac within the CBCH is a community facing difficult environmental and social challenges. This forest community that has traditionally inhabited the Chichinautzin Sierra and has collectively managed its natural resources is experiencing the degradation of its natural resource base and its social fabric. A number of residents are exploiting and commercializing the community's natural resources and communal land has become a for sale commodity. Dissent among the rest of the residents is rising and the community's traditional structure for communal decision-making has not risen to the challenge of creating new rules for governing the use of the commonly held resources. In addition, the Mexican government's recognition of the environmental

importance of the region has led to the establishment of the area as a conservation reserve. Regrettably, this decision has not guaranteed nature conservation. For a community dependent on its local natural resources the future looks bleak. Pressure has mounted on the diminishing resources in the region; illegal logging as well as top soil for gardens in Cuernavaca has reached destructive levels. Deforestation, water scarcity, water and soil contamination from inadequate waste management practices, are a few of the local concerns expressed local residents.

The Process

The Participatory Diagnosis
The ACCES initiative began with a participatory diagnosis, a popular education practice designed to initiate a process of community awareness and action on issues of interest to a community. The objectives behind the establishment of the participatory diagnosis were:
- Define problems locally
- Collectively analyze these problems
- Find local solutions
- Carry out a plan of action

Some of the techniques used to carry out the participatory diagnosis were:
- The ecojuego (ecology game)
- Interviews with elderly people
- Workshops on environmental issues
- Creativity workshops
- Painting of a mural

Research and Information Development
Carrying out research, based on locally identified environmental problems was the second phase of this initiative. Through the participatory diagnosis a process had been put in place to identify community information/research needs and democratize the research process, making research questions relevant to a process of community action. Phase II involved the participation of northern academics in the development of research and information to respond to the community's research needs.

Through the coordination of GEMA and QPIRG-McGill, the results from the participatory diagnosis were analyzed and translated into academic research proposals. The diagnosis identified four different areas of concern to community members: Initially waste management and water quantity and quality were identified. Later on, land use and land use change including urbanization, agricultural and forest issues were also identified as relevant. The diagnosis not only identified information needs and the priorities that concerned community residents but in this case it indicated that community members needed information on alternative means of dealing with their environmental problems; means that took into consideration local needs for employment and the limited economic resources of the participants.

The researchers were introduced to the results from the participatory diagnosis and commissioned to carry out research the following research projects:
- The environmental impacts of topsoil extraction.
- Composting as an alternative to topsoil extraction.
- Quantification of deforestation in Huitzilac.
- Techniques for rain water collection and filtration.
- Impacts of pesticide and fertilizer use.
- Organic agriculture as an alternative.

The community commissioned the research projects and the researchers' role was to carry it out while being held accountable to the community. The researchers were encouraged to form multidisciplinary teams in order to provide a holistic approach to complex environmental issues and to provide the opportunity for building closer relationships between multidisciplinary experts. Some of the researchers travelled to Mexico while others carried out their research from Montreal. They were all asked to provide their research findings in an accessible manner. They had to take into consideration the different literacy levels of the community members involved in the initiative as well as their different ages and gender. As a result, the researchers opted for generating creative communication strategies such as the use of didactical games, reports with visual content (drawings and photographs), the generation of informative maps and website creation.

Information Sharing
The third and last phase of this initiative involved the sharing of the research findings. For information to become useful in addressing the environmental problems that concern decision-makers, it needs to be understood and interpreted by those who were going to use the information. Accordingly, the third and last phase of the initiative involved the taking of steps to

integrate the research findings from all the research conducted to the process of community awareness and action started by the participatory diagnosis. In July and August of 1998, GEMA and QPIRG-McGill carried out their first of two joint ENEPAs (Escuela Nacional de Educación Popular Ambiental), a series of workshops based on the local environmental concerns of the community of Huitzilac as defined by the participatory diagnosis. The second ENEPA between June-August of 1999.

The ENEPAs were designed to strengthen the capacity of the participants from the community of Huitzilac to address environmental problems through collective action. They were designed to provide local decision-makers with methodological and organizational tools, a forum for sharing local perspectives on environmental issues and providing scientific information and environmental technology.

The ENEPAs provided a forum for dialogue between members of the community of Huitzilac, northern and local academics and local and federal government officials on local environmental conditions. The ENEPAs had participation from research collaborators from McGill University, academics from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM), government representatives from the Secretaría del Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca (SEMARNAP). Community members who participated in the ENEPA formed a heterogeneous group including people of different ages, men and women, students, teachers, campesinos, housewives and newly immigrated residents.

The ENEPAs were designed to provide participants with methodological and organizational tools for group work and collective action. Furthermore, the methods applied in the ENEPA workshops themselves were designed to create favourable conditions for collective action through encouraging dialogue among participants and the building of relationships. Thus the participants were instructed in the popular education practice of the participatory diagnosis, participatory research methods and the practice of evaluation. Instruction on these topics was done by facilitators who encouraged group discussions, by putting techniques into practice and by introducing techniques that favour group interaction such as the playing of games. Establishing dialogue among community participants was done to encourage community members to continue working together beyond their participation in the workshops. This was done under the notion that as community members share common concerns they find among themselves the encouragement to collectively work towards environmental action. The building of relationships between participants was encouraged through providing time within the workshops for participants to get to know each other. The workshops provided time for friendly and playful engagement. Participants shared meals and played games with each other.

Scientific information was shared with participants in the ENEPAs. This included information on soils, soil erosion, the water cycle as well as introductions to concepts such as ecology, sustainable development and environmental management. The participants were also instructed on environmental technologies such as reforestation practices, organic agriculture, composting and recycling, rainwater collection and filtration, solar heaters and other alternative means of addressing environmental problems. The results from research conducted by McGill researchers were also shared in the ENEPAs.

Evaluations
Three general evaluations took place throughout the initiative to evaluate general goals, reflect on lessons learned and influence the direction of the initiative. These evaluations took place in Cuernavaca. The evaluation took place in April of

1998, August 1998 and August 1999. Each evaluation lasted for a three day period. The evaluations counted with the participation of GEMA members, QPIRG McGill members, northern researchers and community members involved in the initiative.

The objectives of doing the evaluations were two-fold; to develop a better understanding of the academic-community partnership process and to assess the impact of the partnership on community based environmental decision-making.

The evaluations were also an opportunity to take time within the initiative to reflect on the direction the initiative was heading and to permit participants to evaluate and redirect if needed. Participants were involved in re-stating the initiative's objectives, identifying how each of the partners was contributing to the partnership, what activities had taken place, what impact the activities had on community based environmental decision-making, how the participants envisioned the future of the partnership. Specific themes such as the identification of the obstacles to working in partnership and achieving greater community participation in the initiative were considered.

Lessons learned about Participation
What influenced community members' decision to participate How did the profile of the participants affect the process and outcomes of this initiative?

GEMA was in charge of eliciting community participation in the participatory diagnosis activities and the ENEPAs. While doing research in Huitzilac, the northern researchers were also involved in inviting people to participate. Local traditional authorities, the municipality, campesinos, church groups, elementary and high school teachers and students and municipal government authorities were invited to participate in the initiative. Personal invitations were complemented with the use of posters and pamphlets describing the events and inviting people to participate. Through the periodic evaluations we learned that while some community members found out about the workshops through posters and pamphlets, people who participated did so mainly because of personal invitations.

During the initial stages of the participatory diagnosis there was mainly participation from local women, youth and local teachers. There was no participation by campesinos or their representative authorities. All through out the initiative there was greater participation from women. It is important to mention that there was an effort made to anticipate some of the problems that traditionally keep women from participating in voluntary initiatives and measures were taken to accommodate their participation. With the goal of encouraging the participation of women, parallel activities were designed for children, realizing that many times the lack of alternatives for childcare impedes women's involvement. In all the activities organized throughout the initiative the participation from men was lower in relation to that of women.

One of the obstacles to the participation of men in this initiative is that there is a general feeling of distrust by community members of activities related to the medio ambiente, environment. Those who are involved in forest related activities, mainly campesinos distrust governmental authorities and those who they feel are attempting to enforce conservation regulation. The word medio ambiente has become related to "anti-logging".

Feeling of distrust for environmental activities was not the only motive for the lack of participation by campesinos in the activities. Working schedules thwarted their participation. Many campesinos told the author that while they were very interested they could not afford to miss a day of work. Another obstacle to the participation of campesinos might have been related to the fact that most GEMA and QPIRG-McGill members promoting the initiative were women. It was observed that there are not many forums for both men and women to work together in the community. Men are organized through Bienes Comunales and women are mostly involved in organizations that are related to the well being of the children, such as school and health organizations. Informants identified machismo as a possible reason for the campesinos' reluctance to participate in ACCES.

Contributions to C-BED
How did this process impact community based decision-making in Huitzilac ? The initiative has contributed to the actual formation of community groups in Huitzilac such as Grupo Colibrí, Las Golondrinas and Grupo Huitzi. The initiative also had transformative effects in the academic-community leading to the formation of ACCES, a Montreal based group with the mission of encouraging greater collaboration between academics and community.

Grupo Colibrí
Grupo Colibrí was the first group to emerge. Initially the members of Grupo Colibrí included a total of eight community members, five women and three men. Many of the members are young students, a teacher a campesino and a member of GEMA who lives in Huitzilac. While membership in the group has not remained permanent, Grupo Colibrí has been responsible for planning and carrying out different activities in their community to meet some of the community's waste management challenges. They have organized to work with the municipality to promote the establishment of a recycling center while at the same time having re-use and recycle workshops

and composting workshops to teach other community members how to separate bio-degradable waste and build a compost.

Las Golondrinas
Las Golondrinas was the second group to form in Huitzilac through the ACCES initiative. Eight women formed a mushroom growing and selling micro-enterprise. Las Golondrinas are involved in more than a micro-enterprise, they have become environmental promoters and have participated in different local and regional forums to share their experience with people from nearby communities as well as continue to build their leadership skills. They have also gotten involved locally to pressure for the establishment of a recycling center.

Grupo Huitzi
Grupo Huitzi emerged from the 1999 ENEPA. The experience of this group is worth mentioning because it integrated native Huitzilac residents as well as avecindados (newly immigrated residents from outside of the community, mainly Mexico City). With a history of misunderstandings between these two groups that reside within Huitzilac it is remarkable to see them work together for a common objective. Grupo Huitzi is made up of five members. Two of the members are native women of the community of Huitzilac, two other members are avecindados and the fifth group member is a young native woman from the

neighbouring comunidad of Coajomulco. In addition to finding unlikely allies in each other, these community members found much motivation to organize and act through their participation in the workshops. As one of their initial group activities they decided to clean one of the ravines running through the center of Huitzilac. They also started to make home visits within Huitzilac to teach people some of the techniques they had learned through the ENEPA.

ACCES in Montreal
The impacts of the ACCES initiative were not limited to community organizing in the South, the initiative also gave way to the formation of a student group in the North, ACCES, a group by the same name of the initiative was established with the participation of the northern academics. Participation in this initiative increased the academics' awareness of power relations in research and how these affect the research process. Through the periodic evaluations the academics involved often spoke of the difficulties in meeting both academic demands and the objectives of the initiative. For instance, academics found difficult to be responsive to the community's needs through finding means to make their research accessible while at the same time meeting academic standards. They often found themselves confronted with limited time and having to write their thesis while at the same time providing their research findings in an accessible manner. The application of participatory methodology was also difficult to apply while at the same time being limited to fieldwork periods dictated by academic schedules rather than the community's time. The experience however led these academics to organize and establish a student group with the purpose of establishing forums within university walls to explore these issues. Since 1997 the group has been active in providing workshops and forums for increasing awareness over research and power structures, increasing the capacity of researchers to do participatory research and providing a forum for academic-community partnerships.

Linking Levels of Environmental Decision-Making
A partnership between academics and community can contribute to community-base environmental decision-making through facilitating the establishment of important horizontal and vertical linkages. The ACCES initiative played an important role in facilitating links between residents of Huitzilac involved in the initiative and other communities in the Chichinautzin (horizontal linkages) as well as with government officials and local academics involved in environmental management (vertical linkages). Throughout the life of the ACCES initiative residents from other communities within the Chichinautzin were invited to participate in activities in Huitzilac. ACCES participants were also exposed to other local groups in the region working for sustainability, such as visiting local recycling and composting centers and attending regional environmental fairs.

Through the 1998 and 1999 ENEPAs a multi-stakeholders' forum was established giving community members the opportunity to voice their opinions about conservation and forest regulation in front of governmental officials in charge of conservation policy in the area. Government officials also had the opportunity to inform and clarify local legislation in a less threatening environment. This exchange has broadened all of the participants' understanding of the local situation. The link between local researchers and the community of Huitzilac was also articulated in the ENEPAs. Local residents also had the opportunity to exchange with local academics while reviewing scientific information and local knowledge (ENEPA 1998, 1999.)

Elements that contribute to C-BED
Participant observation with ACCES, interview with participants and ACCES evaluations contributed to developing an understanding of the different factors that contributed to the process of community based organizing and action.

Information and awareness
Participants of the ACCES initiative reported that through their participation they gained important information, which increased their awareness and knowledge of environmental issues motivating them to act. Members of Grupo Colibrí, Grupo Huitzi and Las Golondrinas reported through interviews that participation in the initiative motivated them to make changes within their own lives, as a result of gaining greater awareness of how their actions have an impact on the environment.

Trust
In order to promote open dialogue among a variety of participants, a relaxed atmosphere, where all contributions were acknowledged as valid, was established in all of ACCES' activities. All the activities "strived for the generation of dialogue, to recover knowledge, to validate the word of young and old, of men and women, of literates and illiterates". A relaxed atmosphere was achieved through activities that were fun as well as informative and that permitted people to express themselves through a variety of means, such as the spoken and written word, painting and acting. All the activities that were part of the initiative provided a forum for participants to get to know each other and play games that made participants feel at ease with one another.

Members of Grupo Colibrí indicated that the relationships they developed with other community members with like interests, through their participation in the initiative, were important to their decision to form the group and their ability to work together. How the initiative contributed to relationship building is more clearly observed in the experience of Las Golondrinas. Las Golondrinas expressed that they were initially motivated to participate by the prospect of learning ways of addressing some of the local environmental problems. Learning new information was one element, which allowed them to mobilize towards establishing a new form of employment but the establishing of relationships is what Las Golondrinas emphasized kept them working as a group. They cherish the opportunity they have to work with other women. When questioned about what they liked the most about being part of Las Golondrinas, all the women indicated their appreciation for being together.

Unity
Being able to organize is recognized as a priority in order to solve environmental problems. The members of Grupo Huitzi reported that they value the experience of working as a group and how the experience of working together has motivated them to move toward taking on action on local environmental problems.

Flexibility
Collaboration between academics and community through a partnership calls for keeping an open agenda where the process and not the outcome is the objective. The participatory diagnosis was put in place in order to provide a process for the identification of locally relevant information needs and to give community members decision-making power within the research process. For that reason, it was important to acknowledge the results of this process and plan the research agenda accordingly. As stated earlier, the participatory diagnosis initially indicated the need for information primarily about waste management issues and water quantity and quality. While at this point research support could have been provided to inform on the state of local deforestation and land use change (a particular interest of the northern researchers involved in the initiative), the information would have fallen in less than fertile terrain to be of assistance in a process of community based environmental decision-making and action. Community members were engaged in a process of action at the time where they had decided to work on issues of waste management and required information to inform those actions. Respect for this decision and the provision of information on these issues was primordial. If the objective is to strengthen community based environmental decision-making then academic information must be provided in response to the community's needs.

Flexibility tells participants that their contributions are meaningful. If there is little or no opportunity for flexibility and challenge of initial objectives of an initiative and its procedures then we run the risk of fostering a type of participation where the environmental problems and by implication their solutions have been already defined and participation is only used as a token. The need for flexibility however is not without its problems. Process oriented procedures unlike goal oriented ones cannot provide pre-determined objectives as well as pre-determined means of measuring the achievement of these goals, often required by funding agencies. Furthermore, calling for flexibility also means that the process is highly contingent on the circumstances as well as the participants involved and non-replicable.