Community projects in Havana - towards a grassroots educational model?
Community projects in Havana - towards a grassroots educational model?

Summary/Abstract: This article addresses the challenges that the Cuban educational system in facing nowadays and the way in which grassroots solutions developed by the community projects respond to these challenges. The prolonged economic crisis led not only to the touristification and dollarization of the economy, but also to the disenchantment with the opportunities offered by finishing education. This disproportionately affects the communities inhabiting peripheral areas of Havana which feel neglected and express their discontent over the decline in the quality of education. Community projects, thanks to their flexibility, are able to offer alternative solutions to the ongoing educational crisis. They navigate between different institutional actors to maximize community engagement. Such projects occupy the space between local governments and the citizens, while also facilitating the contact between volunteering-oriented tourists that tend to become the primary source of income for the project. The study opens with a broader overview of the changing educational landscape of Cuba and the general perceptions of the crisis it is undergoing. In the second part of the article, the focus is on the educational activities organized by community projects. I consider how they insert themselves into the existing educational systems and respond to the changing context with the rise of the tourist industry, migrations and many people envisioning their future abroad. This article is based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2023 centred around community projects in the marginalized areas of Havana.

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