We are hard at work here in Mexico City calling embassies, signing contracts, and putting final touches on our curriculum. We have twenty amazing students excited to break through bureaucracy, national boundaries, and their own horizons to come together and build new narratives about the War on Drugs. We have been getting chills of excitement as we get to know each of our students better and cannot wait to welcome them in Cuernavaca in 2 weeks time.
Diana Rodriguez-Gómez and Atenea Rosado have been hard at work building a detailed and inspiring curriculum that we hope will have a long life of its own beyond our classroom. Building from the feminist premise that the personal is political, we have collaboratively imagined a set of lessons that will equip students with a sense of ownership over the histories that have shaped their communities. Each day, participants will meet an activist, journalist, scholar or policy maker whose work relates to the content of our morning workshops. Our guests will share their own story and engage directly with our students' questions. The program will culminate in a finale event in Mexico City where students will share stories and artwork with the public on a rooftop garden.
We are convinced that young people have the right to receive a comprehensive drug education that exposes them to the historical, sociopolitical, and transnational components of the War on Drugs. We hope that in addition to a deep understanding of the War on Drugs, Catalyst participants will come to recognize themselves as producers of knowledge and generators of social change.
