Abstract
By Youth, For Youth: The Empoderando a Latinoamérica Program as a Model of Philosophy Outreach to Underserved Communities
Popular education initiatives in Latin America—a bold tradition encompassing the work of Paulo Freire, liberation theologians, and activists in virtually every field—offer much-needed models of social justice-focused philosophical outreach to underserved populations. That the Anglophone world could learn from such initiatives is not controversial; however, enduring barriers such as geographical distance, monolingualism, and unequal access to platforms from which to disseminate work across the North-South gap make it especially difficult for Latin American educators to share their insights with the more interconnected North.
The current gap in knowledge about philosophy outreach projects grounded in the tradition of Latin American popular education represents a missed opportunity to engage in fruitful exchanges that would increase the pedagogical and methodological diversity of pre-college philosophy. We aim to help start this process of cross-fertilization by presenting the philosophy outreach model developed by Empoderando a Latinoamérica (Empowering Latin America).
Empoderando a Latinoamérica is a youth-designed, youth-led four-week program whose aim is to empower emerging Latin American community leaders, artists, and activists working for social and environmental justice. The program brings together high-school and college-aged Latin Americans from diverse countries and backgrounds, establishing a community of inquiry wherein participants and facilitators discuss theoretical and practical issues toward becoming better agents of social change.
Empoderando a Latinoamérica is unorthodox in its structure and methodology—it is youth-led, horizontal, residential, multicultural, trilingual, and consists almost entirely of workshops and group activities as opposed to academic lectures. My presentation will focus on the following issues: First, I will show how Empoderando a Latinoaméricais an innovative approach to philosophy outreach. Here I will argue that the popular education value of horizontality leads to an intellectual atmosphere that embodies the reasons why we advocate philosophical discussion of social issues (e.g. questioning given answers on the origin and solution for different inequities) as well as pre-college philosophy more generally (e.g. independent thinking, identifying and addressing hidden assumptions and biases). I will also illustrate, through the use of qualitative and anecdotal evidence, the cruciality of diverse representation when forming communities of inquiry that discuss identity-based oppression. Second, I will provide a brief overview of what is required to design and execute a similar program from a student perspective. And third, I will sketch a model for how university professors can support college students engaged in such projects.
Finally, I raisethe question of whetherintellectually and emotionally unconstrained critique of power structures—possibly philosophy’s most important contribution to the fight for social justice—can happen in a traditional classroom setting, where both teachers and students are embedded in vertical power dynamics that limit the honesty of the exchange, and from which it is difficult to dissociate. I come to the optimistic conclusion that the pedagogical model of Empoderando a Latinoamérica proves that we can advance social justice through philosophical discussions in or outside the classroom.