Development of Practices with Handicrafts, Design, and Community Art (ADA)

"Preserving Traditions: Handicrafts and Education in Pechiche"
"Culture and Education: Handicrafts and Community Design"
"Cultural Identity in the Classroom"

Through the "Development of Practices with Handicrafts, Design, and Community Art (ADA)" project, educational materials based on ancestral knowledge of local handicrafts are incorporated into the school curriculum. Additionally, playful and practical workshops are implemented in communities to strengthen cultural identity and improve the quality of teaching and learning processes in an innovative and active way.

The project, led by María de los Ángeles Custoja Ripoll, M.Sc., is being carried out in the Pechiche commune, in the rural parish of Chanduy, located in the Santa Elena canton and province. Its aim is to contribute to the formal education of children from 3rd to 5th grade in the General Basic Education (GBE) system through the practice of traditional crafts from their own community.

The execution of the project provides new educational tools, such as stories about handicrafts, playful-practical educational activities, small-scale 3D loom prototypes, and photographic, sound, and video documentation for the development of a mobile application.

Through this project, the participation of children in basic education and their teachers has been successfully integrated into playful-practical workshops, resulting in the creation of weavings and ceramics.