Education and development in Latin America: Building conviviality in local communities and national education policis

Founded in Caracas in 1955, Fe y Alegría is a popular education and social promotion movement that serves excluded populations from the school and social system in remote rural regions and marginal urban neighbourhoods. With a critical popular pedagogy approach, the movement has spread to 22 countries in Latin America, Africa and Europe, building a pedagogical reputation within the national education systems.

Despite this reputation, the leaders of Fe y Alegría have shown the highest interest in holding an external evaluation. In 2019, Fe y Alegría asked the International Institute of Social Studies for academic expertise to evaluate its social impact at three levels: Individuals (students and ex-alumnae), community incidence and national educational policy.

In this Research in Progress seminar, Georgina Gómez and Blas Regnault present the results of this research, focusing on the Fe y Alegría impact on building conviviality in local communities and the movement's influence on national educational policies. The study was carried out in six Latin American countries: Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela

On community, the study has found that the actions of Fe y Alegría schools transcend the educational realm and have a long-term incidence in the communities where the schools are placed. A vital component of this vision is their clear participatory governance approach that enhances and builds social capital in the neighbourhoods.

Participatory governance means that students and their households are engaged in the schools' decision-making, management, coordination, and communication. At the same time, other local actors such as neighbours, municipal mayors and other local authorities, enterprises, donors, and various religious and non-governmental groups are regularly involved in the social life of the schools. Naturally, this governance modality entails tensions with successes and failures.

On national educational policies, the study explored the ways and channels through which Fe y Alegría has influenced the national educational systems in a resource-constrained context.

The evidence suggests that Fe y Alegría has limited but critical influence on the education policies. Its incidence is not homogeneous, either geographically or temporarily. It varies among countries and within them, but it was possible to identify concrete and sustained actions relatively common in the six countries under study that unveil the incidence of Fe y Alegría in the Latin American national education systems:

• participating in public discussions, joining local, regional and national government spaces to discuss laws and regulations associated with the educational practice;
• responding to the queries made by governments as an organization that implements educational policy;
• creating good practices of school administration as models to imitate or replicate, labelled the 'Showcase effect'.