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About us:

La Clase Mágica-Sevilla is a project that combines research, intervention and teaching. In La Clase Mágica, students, teachers and researchers from the University Pablo de Olavide, work together with community workers and residents of the “Polígono Sur” in Sevilla. This action-research is carried out as a Service-Learning concept, i.e. as a training tool that integrates academic knowledge and values formation. Through Service-Learning the students learn and mature “morally through active participation in service experiences so intelligently organized as to involve knowledge” (Naval, C.2008, P.64).

This methodology entails that the various stakeholders (teachers, students and people receiving the action) are aware of the need for learning to take place in contact with society. As a complex entity, society serves as a tool to enable and force students to perform complex analysis while remaining connected to social reality, therefore involving them in the process of transformation and public participation. It's all about getting, through these experiences, responsible professionals committed to their work, and also relationships and university commitments that go on line to improve our educational system in general.

Through the project of La Clase Mágica-Sevilla we collaborate with neighbors and Polígono Sur’s associations providing educational resources, such as technology and the presence of university students, to help children and adults to overcome educational obstacles arising from conditions of marginalization and poverty. Our activities are rooted in the interests and cultural background of the neighborhood’s children and adults. Moreover, university students obtain practical knowledge about the concepts studied in the course as well as professional experience in community work. Additionally, students get to know cultural and social realities very different from their own, which gives them training that goes beyond traditional academic boundaries, thus transforming them as people and as citizens.

Contact:

Beatriz Macías Gomez-Estern

bmacgom@upo.es

34 954 97 75 05

               

Virginia Martinez Lozano

vmarloz@upo.es

34 954 34 89 02

Professors and researchers at the University Pablo de Olavide.

Department of Social Anthropology, Basic Psychology, and Public Health.

Pablo de Olavide University, Seville.

Carretera de Utrera km 1.

Sevilla 41013.

Where do we work:

Polígono Sur consists of six neighborhoods (Paz y Amistad, Sector Ronda de la Oliva, Antonio Machado, Martínez Montañés, Las Letanías y Murillo) with a total area of 145 ha (0.55mi²) , and as its name suggests, is located south of the city of Sevilla, towards Utrera.

Polígono Sur is restricted with respect to the city, on one side by the railway Sevilla-Cádiz, on the other side by the road of “Su Eminencia”, and finally by Hytasa industrial park. This situation has made the residents feel isolated from the rest of the city.

The total population is 32,480 inhabitants (year 2003) according to the Demographic Bulletin of the city of Sevilla, although other studies currently stand around 50,000 people.

Image: juntadeandalucia.es

The wide diversity of origins, backgrounds, cultures or occupations of the families that populated the district from the 60s, are the source of enormous human potential and richness of the present population of Polígono Sur. This diversity is al also the embryo of Polígono Sur’s neighborhood movement, as well as the artistic and caring attitude of the residents of this part of the city of Sevilla.