Description

Text produced by the Government of Antioquia as a nomination for the IOPD 2022 Award

The Department of Antioquia is located in northwestern Colombia, in the Andean and Caribbean regions, bordered to the north by the Caribbean Sea (Atlantic Ocean), Córdoba and Bolívar, to the east by Santander and Boyacá, to the south by Caldas and Risaralda, and to the west by Chocó. 

With 6,887,306 inhabitants in 2022, it is the most populated department, with the largest human settlement in the Aburrá Valley area and its surrounding regions, that is, the area surrounding the city of Medellín, the second most populated city in the country; with 63,600 km², which corresponds to 5.44% of the national continental territory, the sixth largest, it is one of the thirty-two departments that make up the Republic of Colombia Antioquia.

Within the framework of what was enacted by Law 1757 of 2015 on the promotion of citizen participation of individuals, collectives and social organizations, the Government of Antioquia is in the process of formulating the Public Policy of Citizen Participation of Antioquia, which intends, in turn, the creation of the Youth Laboratory from Program 6: Culture of Good Relationship as Collective Action. 

Within this program, the materialization of cultural, pedagogical and volunteering processes are contemplated from actions and spaces with the young population and women of the Department as ambassadors of a nonviolent society, who, from ideation, co-creation and volunteering, dream and develop in Antioquia a laboratory with social and innovative practices that account for a positive way of relating (Government of Antioquia, 2020).

Likewise, the pedagogy of nonviolence will be one of the nodes that will shape the new culture of good relations. It should be noted that nonviolence is not a peaceful and static view of what is happening around, on the contrary, it represents the mobilization of citizenship in the construction of scenarios of peace, justice and coexistence. The view that nonviolence provides is that of peace that is created from the small daily actions of relating with the other and with the environment.

Methodology

Antioquia LAB -Youth Laboratory- is the central project of the Culture of Good Relationship as Collective Action program, and seeks to open alternative meeting spaces to discuss, devise and co-create collective actions in favor of territories for life; starting from listening to the voices of its protagonists to trace UNITED routes of action towards the experience of the culture of good relationship.

In 2022, Antioquia LAB will be held in each sub-region (9 sub-regions) of the department of Antioquia, in the form of 3-day camp-like Sub-regional Meetings, which will address phases of conversation of problems, ideation of innovative solutions, enrichment of practical and theoretical knowledge, thematic debates, stories and expressions of talents, focused on the joint construction of collective actions or volunteering. In addition, representatives of the participants of Antioquia LAB 2022 will meet in a tenth departmental meeting space to close the process, exchanging knowledge and experiences in their territories.

Thus, under the premise of collective construction for the department and the scheme that young people propose and in turn execute innovative solutions for their territories, a path is opened for Antioquia LAB as that government program that will generate meeting spaces in which the youth of Antioquia will feel comfortable, safe and above all heard, as a starting point to build processes of voluntary actions with the other joining efforts to have territories for life, equity and unity. The target audience of Antioquia LAB is young men and women from the department of Antioquia between 14 and 28 years of age.

Impacts and results

• Antioquia LAB has implemented more than 60 socialization and training actions for the consolidation of a collective culture and promotion of nonviolence.
• 1,020 people trained in Nonviolence pedagogy as a way of life.
• 2,366 women and young people have participated and promoted the processes of Nonviolence, whose profiles correspond to young leaders in their localities and also to young people who are beginning their active youth participation, being Antioquia LAB the scenario to exchange knowledge and multiply messages.
• After the Encounters, youth leadership networks have been reactivated as municipal youth platforms, thanks to the meeting and exchange space experienced in Antioquia LAB.
• Manifestos for Youth Nonviolence in Antioquia are being built in each sub-region of the department according to the specificities of each one.
• Volunteer actions have been carried out in different scenarios such as the adaptation of municipal public spaces, meetings with the elderly, children and people with disabilities, among others, which has strengthened the dissemination of a culture of good relations as a collective action in Antioquia.

More information

• Nomination file in Spanish (PDF)
• Instagram @antioquia.lab: https://www.instagram.com/antioquia.lab/
• Instagram @participaant: https://www.instagram.com/participaant/?hl=es