The Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural (UVI), a higher education institution in México, launched in 2004 a bachelor degree in intercultural management for development in four indigenous and rural regions of the state of Veracruz. UV identified the necessity and opportunity to provide education at a higher level through five professional fields within the aforementioned bacherlor degree program, among which are sustainability and collective and individual human rights. This paper explores the educational experience by which sustainability and the exercise of human rights merge in communitarian processes led by our teachers, students and graduates. The curriculum provides tools for participatory management and research of problems concerning territory, natural resources, cultural patrimony and human rights based on an intercultural and sustainable approach to deal with cultural diversity. Participation on the part of the educators consists of coordinating the Department of Rights within the UVI, teaching, analyzing and updating the curriculum, and supervising ongoing students’ research projects.
The Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural was born in 2004 as an academic project of the Universidad Veracruzana and the Secretaria de Educación Pública in México, to offer a higher education program in four indigenous and rural regions of the state of Veracruz, Mexico. The core of the program is the formation of professionals who can contribute to the sustainable development of their regions based on an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach. The BA in Intercultural Management for Development includes five professional specializations: sustainability, rights, media, health and languages. I refer specifically to sustainability and rights, as specializations that contribute to the solution and management of communitarian problems regarding natural resources, land, territory and human rights (either collective or individual).
To analyze the merging of two specializations within the BA in Intercultural Management for Development offered by the Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural in Mexico - Sustainability and Rights - for the solution of on-site communitarian problems in indigenous regions.
To provide examples of research and intervention projects led by students in the areas of sustainabilty and rights, which had have impact on the regions where the academic programme has been offered.
The good practice consists of:
Courses considering an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach to sustainability and human rights;
Research supervision by teachers to provide guide for a participatory approach to define, deal with, analyze and propose solutions to a problem; and
Research and intervention conduction to deal with and give solutions to communitarian and/or regional problems in the regions where the academic program is being offered.
Results have emerged from daily interaction between academic actors (students, teachers, etc.) and communitarian actors as part of research and intervention projects defined through participatory processes and collaboration. We count with examples of successful intervention in community processes such as tenency of land, regulation of health and pollution problems, initiatives for a better and sustainable environment, etc., in four indigenous regions of Veracruz. Besides this, we count with the experience of the implementation of a curriculum which comprises courses oriented to provide epistemological, theoretical and methodological elements for the development of a learning process through direct work and involvement in real problems.
An intercultural approach to deal with diversity, differences and inequality in indigenous regions of Mexico in aspects such as natural resources territory, lands, and human rights through an innovative BA curriculum.
An academic program based on research and management in order to make a direct impact on problems related to sustainable development and exercise of human rights through a participatory approach involving not only academic actors, but also communitarian and social actors of the regions.
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