Programa de educación para la paz con énfasis en las emociones: investigación – acción participativa, dirigida a grupo poblacional en proceso de inserción social

Abstract

This work corresponds to the development of my internship as a degree requirement in the Bachelor’s Program in Artistic Education at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, under the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology. The experience was carried out in collaboration with The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) and its Peace Education Program (PEP).

In the first phase, I took the PEP course in order to become familiar with its content, dynamics, and objectives. In a second phase, I assumed the role of intern-facilitator and applied the PEP guidelines at the International Organization REMAR, with a population in the process of social reintegration in the Los Mártires district of Bogotá.

My work focused on identifying the degree of awareness (in its rational, emotional, and sensitive dimensions) that the program participants had regarding their actions and attitudes within it, with the aim of providing support and serving as an assistant-facilitator in strengthening their relational bonds. This work enabled the development of participatory, self-reflective, and critical awareness as structural axes at both intra- and interpersonal levels. This was carried out within the organization’s spaces for reflection through audiovisual, written, and participatory workshops.

In summary, the main purpose of the internship and my role within it was to contribute to the essential goal of the PEP: to foster a peaceful and prosperous sense of dignity in the participants’ lives (and reciprocally in my own case as an intern), and to help strengthen psychosocial bonds through the promotion of understanding and critical awareness of our integral needs as members of a community. From this emerged a central question, which will be addressed at the end of this document: To what extent is the generation of awareness—in the three described dimensions—a constructive faculty (or not) for fostering and achieving a peaceful and prosperous dignity in the contexts worked on?