Gente de la Tierra: a Fotoblog Project to Connect Youth, Communities, and Stewardship of the Earth

press release: Please join UW Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program for the LACIS Lunchtime Lecture, Tuesdays at noon. The events are free and open to the public. Room 206.

About the presentation: The “Gente de la Tierra” project, supported by  LACIS SEED funding, further developed and assessed a photoblog platform, which was originally created by a team of UW-Madison colleagues along with their collaborators at the Museo de Ciencias Ambientales in Guadalajara, Mexico (“MCA”). The photoblog platform aims to connect and inspire youth across Latin America and beyond, and to host digital storytelling about community members’ relationships with the natural environment, in turn further supporting their engagement with environmental issues. Through our recent work on the project, we have engaged with several UW-Madison collaborators across Latin America to contribute to the photoblog and obtain their feedback on the platform and the ways it can serve youth in their cross-context engagement around environmental issues going forward. In future stages, we hope to continue to collect content from student contributors and gather information about the impact of the platform on youth engagement and agency around environmental issues, and incubate an updated plan for continuation of the platform for maximum impact.

About the presenters: Mary Beth Collins, Executive Director, Center for Community & Nonprofit Studies, School of Human Ecology, UW-Madison | Maria Moreno, Earth Partnership and Associate for Experiential Education,  Global Health Institute, UW-Madison |Carlos Dávalos, doctoral candidate, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, UW-Madison.