This program endeavors to strengthen skills in university-level indigenous youth via community experience to identify the needs of their places of origin and/or residence and provide solutions to development problems in these areas.

This program reflects our social responsibility and the commitment to social and educational inclusion, looking to contribute to the development of underprivileged communities in a framework of respect for indigenous communities.

In this academic program, university-level indigenous youths identify local problems and design viable solutions. It is also a forum to reflect on and voice their opinions, as they have seen social inequality not as an index, but as a reality in which live.

Relevant aspects of the program

• This program wants to construct substantive equality in the indigenous university population, pointing to the elimination of inequalities and providing additional support to a group that has been disadvantaged in their access to a university education.
• A multidisciplinary academic program based on 5 central concepts that are relevant to the realities and needs of indigenous youth communities: language, migration, environment, health and gender. These concepts have been this program’s framework to find a solution to problems such as opportunities and economic prosperity, gender integration, marginalized communities, democracy and human rights.
• Create research and non-extractive projects supported by the participant’s experience as they are the experts who recognize the needs of their communities and therefore create research or culturally relevant projects from an interdisciplinary focus that is part of their education during this program
• The PLJI does not study indigenous communities, which is an ethical point that is important to us. During their stay, the students of this program develop proposals to solve problems that are specific to their communities, which are not followed-up on to develop new lines of research.
• This program has international reach, which promotes diversity not only within the country, but in a region that needs to create identity relationships between its native communities.
• There are three graduate categories for this program: academic development, community development and public sector.

As of June 2024, the program has over 340 graduates, from 24 Mexican states and 8 countries. During the four weeks of the program, students attend the UDLAP campus to develop projects that propose improvements in their communities, either by optimizing current public policies or proposing relevant topics in the public agenda.

With the support of professors, mentors and academic staff, groups are created based on the participant’s interests. Even if the members do not belong to the same community or area, the teams select the community of one of the members to develop a project that addresses common problems. This focus allows the participants to share relevant solutions from different perspectives. To date, over 60 projects have been developed.

INDIGENOUS YOUTH LEADERSHIP PROGRAM