Much has been said about the youth during the pandemic, mostly by word of mouth adult people. She has been judged, she has been accused of lack of solidarity, an image has been shown biased, stereotyped and unreal. But the youth that we know is not that. The monitors who accompany thousands of children every weekend who participate in ‘esplai’ centers and clubs, in ‘caus’ and in leisure spaces are a youth engaged with its environment and social transformation through non-formal education. They are, if anything, a youth disconnected in many aspects. Not at all little committed or uncritical with what surrounds her, but disconnected from the ‘status quo’, from the ‘establishment’, from the caste. Away from a ruling class that is more dedicated to the logic of parties than to making street politics and of a Parliament where he finds neither delusion no solution to your problems.
What do you think a young person thinks who cannot access decent housing and who sees how, day by day, dozens of evictions in our environment? How outraged must a young person be who cannot finish the college because studying has turned out to be a privilege for rich more than a universal right, or one that is forced to work hours and hours in a precarious work? How must a youth feel when they perceive that there is a clear limitation in social rights or that it finds itself with the media, in collusion with political parties, that accentuate the speeches of hatred against feminism, immigrants or LGTBI groups?
They are just some of the many concerns that our youth have, and that, it must be said, are not just problems of this group. Because unfortunately the money moves this world and makes the system only work for a few: the usual, the powerful.
What solution we give them, from the ‘esplai’, from the entities that work for the leisure education? education in a critical spirit and for social transformation. Our concept of education involves turning this system around and leaving behind the injustices and social classes, to combat inequalities and lack of equity in access to leisure, a universal right that has not just materialized.
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to do this worked as we would like, however, we need many things that we do not have now. Plus economic resources through the leisure agreement that has been frozen for years; premises and decent spaces where we can carry out our work; but, above all, a real institutional recognition of our educational and social activity, which values the work we do and recognizes us as key educational agent, equating us to formal education centers. The functions are different, but necessarily compatible. We cannot go to the slipstream of the schools, we must be able to talk to each other face to face, that the Administration builds pedagogical circuits between leisure education, educational centers and social services. This networking would favor the detection in leisure spaces of needs and problems that, sometimes, often due to lack of resources, are overlooked in the schools and institutes.
With this support, with that recognition of the educational work that thousands of young people are already doing right now, voluntarily, dedicating their free time to others to make their neighborhood a better world, we can do a lot. We can move decisively towards a more fair where the values that we believe are universal and that we apply every day to our pedagogical and social activity prevail: esteem, respect, active listening, feminism, friendship, inclusion, sustainability, fraternity, equality, the tolerance. “Let’s put the child in the center”, we have repeated throughout the pandemic. But perhaps now it is also time to place our youthbecause they are an engine of change with inexhaustible potential.