Top 5 Research Findings:
Education Accessibility for Tarahumara Indigenous Communities — Thesis Week 7
Three weeks ago, I posted an update on my ongoing research for my thesis on Empowering Indigenous Communities in Mexico. Between then and now, apart from continuing on expanding my secondary research, I have started to contact, interview, and establish relationships with various people who work directly with specific indigenous communities in Mexico, who have knowledge on subjects regarding indigeneity, and who have had experience working with minority groups — related and not related to indigenous people.
Through this primary research that I have started and synthesized, I have so far identified five opportunity areas my project could tackle in order to successfully make a real change and impact on indigenous people. It is through this that I decided to narrow my focus from the empowerment of indigenous people to education accessibility for indigenous Tarahumara teenagers pursuing secondary, high-school, and higher education.
1. There is value in a singular community.
There is a value within focusing on a specific demographic and group of people given that each community is unique and diverse. There is an opportunity to focus on a specific Indigenous community, which will bring value specific to them. It is therefore that I have decided to focus on the Tarahumara (Raramuri) people of Chihuahua, given my easy of accessibility to the region.
2. Giving back to own community.
There is an opportunity for Indigenous Tarahumara youth to give back to their community through giving them access to education, increasing the chances of them making a lasting change in their own community.
3. Specific learning tools for a specific community.
Inaccessibility to proper learning tools from an early age specific to the Tarahumara communities, and learning Spanish as a second language leads to high Illiteracy rates, therefore there is an opportunity to improve teaching and learning practices unique to the community through access to internet educational platforms.
4. Offline technology access.
Inaccessibility to the internet hinders educational teaching and learning potential. Therefore, there is an opportunity to improve teaching and learning practices through offline technology access platforms.
5. Privilege as a tool for change.
Identifying the root causes vs symptoms of the problem, identifying one’s privilege, and listening as well as working directly with the communities rather than speaking for them leads to an opportunity for dialogue in order to bring empathy, using the NGO as a bridge to connect with the community, which will help measure impact.
Theory of Change.
Developing a system that improves teaching and learning opportunities in partnership with Fundacion Tarahumara Jose A. Llaguno will help Indigenous Tarahumara teenagers in Chihuahua, Mexico who want to want to pursue higher education and give back to their communities by providing access to offline technology platforms that are unique to the Tarahumara needs, but currently unavailable, unlike the existent online-reliant platforms not specific to the Tarahumara communities.
