Closer collaborations with the Autonomous University of Baja California to work on education for global justice
Technicians from the Area of Cooperation and Education for a Global Justice of the Fundació Autònoma Solidària visited the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the Autonomous University of Baja California, Mexico. The collaboration forms part of the Pluriversitat project, which receives support from the Barcelona City Council. The meeting has led to an exchange of good practices in university actions focusing on global justice, interuniversity cooperation, and the reception of refugee students.
This November, the Fundació Autònoma Solidària participated in the "Seminar on Education, Gender and Migrations: Pedagogies of hope, paths to social justice" organised by the Autonomous University of Baja California - UABC (Mexico). During the seminar, the technicians of the Area of Cooperation and Education for Global Justice, Marta Batalla and Rosana Carvalho, presented the reception programme for refugees at the UAB with the conference "Access to higher education and academic inclusion in the face of violations of the right to asylum in Fortress Europe: the HACES-UAB Reception Programme" at the Faculty of Pedagogy and Educational Innovation of the UABC in Mexicali (Baja California). They also participated in two round tables: "Social justice and higher education: how do we form socially committed citizens? Actions and daily practices to imagine a world in reverse" where the UAB Solidarity Fund and other initiatives of curricular and formative incidence such as the Arcadi Oliveres TFG awards for Global Justice were presented.
In addition to the seminar, the team travelled to Tijuana to deepen their networking with organisations and journalists working for the defence of human rights in border regions. They visited the "Casa Obrera de Baja California", a social and workers' organisation that works for the rights of maquila factory workers. They also learned about the wall at the western end of the US-Mexico border from José Ibarra. Ibarra is a journalist and collaborated with the project "Frontera Crónica: Workshop on cross-border journalism and co-creation for the promotion of a critical view and the construction of other narratives on violence", led by lecturer Santiago Tejedor Calvo, from the Faculty of Communication Studies, and with the support of the UAB Solidarity Fund.
The four-day stay served to establish north-south links of inter-university cooperation, based on education for global justice and aimed at strengthening the social commitment of universities through the exchange of experiences and knowledge with the global South. This initiative is a continuation of a similar collaboration established with the University of Antioquia - UdEA, Colombia since 2022. Both exchanges have been funded by the Barcelona City Council, within the Pluriversitat project. The results of the exchanges can be consulted online, through the training seminars on global justice from universities on YouTube (available at this link).