La creatividad es la inteligencia divertiendose” (Creativity is intelligence having fun) - Linda Zilbert, 30/4/2014
04/05/2014
Conducting the first focus group with the community leaders of Huaycan was overwhelming for all of us. Most of us had never conducted a focus group before, but the excitement, preparation and dedication were enough to make up for our the lack of experience.
We started the exercise by asking people about the most important environmental problems in Huaycan and the strategies they use to deal with them. In order to better engage the participants, we decided to use a map of Huaycan to locate environmental problems in space. We were surprised by the excitement this change triggered. Through the exercise, we were able to uncover spatial dimensions of problems faced by different communities within Huaycan and their prioritisation in space.
The exercise was very productive for us, and we hope for the community as well. The main lesson for the group was that preparation is the key, engagement is the necessity and adding creativity makes it fun.
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A community garden in Zone V
03/05/2014
The story of the formation of Huaycan is an inspiring one which speaks volumes to what can be achieved if people are united. However, over the course of time, conditions have changed and a discourse has emerged which lays blame on a new individualistic generation which has lost the community values upon which Huaycan was built.
For example, we visited Zone V on Saturday. Zone V is located on the upper slopes of Huaycan, which has difficult terrain and accessibility. In spite of this, we were surprise to see the residents’ efforts to set up a community garden using recycled water to grow crops which are used for personal consumption as well as trade. The people involved with this made regular meetings with people of other zones with similar practices to exchange ideas and build capacities.
It is true that there have been many changes within Huaycan, but these instances of community cooperation allow a glimpse of the social foundation upon which Huaycan was built.
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28/04/2014
The first day of our fieldwork in
Lima was an exciting moment for the whole team as we are still discovering the atmosphere of the
city. After overcoming many obstacles, we now have a clear strategy for how we
are going to develop our field trip.
The presentation to our Lima
partners helped us to fill in the gaps in our research. After some constructive
feedback from Rossana, Godfredo, Andrés and Teresa we were able to frame the plan for the first day of the
fieldwork. With a long day of brainstorming, we as a group are left with high
moral and all prepared for the first day of work with the community.
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