Colectivo Mosaico A.C, an educational nonprofit with tax-deductible donation status based in Mexico City.
Our Mission and Vision
Our mission is to help students learn more about themselves and, through that process, increase their self-confidence and self-esteem. We support students in becoming agents of transformation in their own lives through mentorship, praxis, creativity, fun, mutual responsibility and open dialogue.
Our vision is for students everywhere to find agency and purpose in their education and their everyday lives.
Our Work
We carry out our mission and strive toward our vision through our work as independent counselors, helping students navigate the college application process, and our work as facilitators, designing and teaching environmental education, sexual/gender education, and art-based education at schools and community centers.
After working with students for more than six years and critically analyzing the Mexican national curriculum, we have developed six social justice and arts-based educational programs for students with a diverse range of ages and backgrounds. We believe they complement students’ current educational experience by addressing gaps in their curriculum. Our methodology integrates games, self-reflection and arts-based activities to be relevant, fulfilling, and engaging for young people.
Our Programs
Planet Defenders
Our environmental education program, Planet Defenders, is designed to facilitate reflection and conversation with kids and teens regarding environmental justice, climate change and the loss of biodiversity on a local, national, and global scale. Our program was developed with the expertise of a teacher, an ecologist and a visual artist. It therefore integrates creative pedagogies with scientific thinking and expressive art to address socio-environmental issues. The program is designed to catalyze curiosity and critical thinking when seeking ways to process and respond to the climate and biodiversity crisis.
By equipping young people with the tools to critically assess and articulate the local effects and root causes of global climate change, and by offering simple outlets for expression to build resiliency and community within these groups, we assist a rising generation of leaders to observe, organize, and advocate for systems’ level changes.
We have received funding from the U.S. State Department through the Citizen Action Diplomacy Fund to implement this program. We have taught Planet Defenders four different times with the following communities. Students created three different murals and a community vegetable and herb garden.
Hogares Providencia (20 students ages 5- 15)
Centro Comunitario San Lorenzo (30 students ages 5-8 and 20 students ages 9- 13)
Secundaria 255 Antonio Semionovich Makarenko (40 students ages 12-13)
Centro Comunitario Sembrando Libertad (10 students ages 6-14)
Rapeando-ando
Music is transformative. Rapeando-ando, our hip-hop based program, provides students with a space and community where they can express themselves artistically and find their voice. This program is designed and co-taught with local rapper Fieraa, a member of the Mosaico team. Sharing their creativity and ideas with their peers and community grows and supports their self-esteem and sense of self-worth. In this introduction to the world of rap and hip-hop, students form a “crew”, composed of rapers, breakdancers, beatboxers or djs and graffiti artists.
We help students explore and experiment with these different components of hip-hop culture and with the different songwriting tools they’ll need for their raps, among them consonant and assonant rhymes, rhythm and metric. Each “crew” uses these tools to write their own raps, create their own beat, design their tag, and finally present their work to their community.
For the first iteration of this program, we had the opportunity to collaborate with local organization Desinfluenciarte and the Alcaldía de Iztapalapa. Students created a graffiti mural in their public housing complex and shared their raps and collective chorus with their neighbors.
Ixmati
Our Sex Ed, Gender & Consent Program, Ixmati, is designed to prompt open conversations, encourage self-exploration, aim to prevent harassment and violence, and provide accurate and important information for teens. Our primary focus is to help students understand and practice consent in an integral way, recognizing its importance in every aspect of their interpersonal relationships from an early age. We also focus on helping students think through self-esteem as this is the basis for forming nourishing relationships.
We follow the central aims outlined by UNESCO for comprehensive and age appropriate sexual education. “[Comprehensive sex educations] aims to equip children and young people with knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that will empower them to: realize their health, well-being and dignity; develop respectful social and sexual relationships; consider how their choices affect their own well-being and that of others; and understand and ensure the protection of their rights throughout their lives.”
For two years, we have integrated lessons from this program into the curriculum at Secundaria 315 José Vasconcelos. We also coordinated a full implementation of the program with a group of 15 teens at the Centro Comunitario Bellavista, in collaboration with the Alcaldía de Iztapalapa.