Xictli

Since we depend highly on our communication skills, a lack of them is a factor in problems like low academic performance.

In Xictli, our goal is to build effective communication and active listening competences with children aged 8 to 14 through arts, so that they comprehend messages, and express themselves, becoming crytical members of our society who manage their emmotions properly.

Our first approach was offering a brief workshop in an elementary school, where we break down the communication process with games and study cases. The participants then write short stories as a medium for transmitting ideas, that we compile and organize for a book presentation. We recently finished our first digital version of these workshops. Facing the pandemic, we turned our attention towards digital media to share how everyone can express themselves through art, which led us to create and publish content in our website regarding different artistic disciplines.

Xictli aims at giving young learners in Toluca the skills to receive information, process it and express themselves precisely. We intend to prevent the consequences of inefficient communication, such as low academic performance or poor relationships. Xictli hopes to equip children and teens with tools for communicating their ideas introducing them to artistic disciplines. 

In Xictli, we have developed two approaches to work on these field.

Our first approach has been to offer a workshop for children and teenagers aged 8 to 14 where they can build competences on communication. In this dialogue space, we use games and study cases to teach them about the process and elements in everyday communication and introduce some techniques for them to be better listeners and speakers, so that participants are able to comprehend others and convey their ideas precisely. In the last 3 sessions, they apply this knowledge expressing a message in a story of their own.

The second path we have followed to reduce this lack of communication skills is exposing the same audiences to different artistic expressions through digital contents in a website (xictli-cuento.com) and social network’s pages. The content we cover ranges from literature to plastic arts, intending to show our public that there are several means to express their ideas and emotions to others.

We mean to work with children and teens aged 8 to 14. In our region, language and arts are taught as school subjects, orientend to have students swiftly reading materials or performing activities with little to no regard on comprehending the message contained in them and failing to present these acts as a channel for emotions.

  Our goal is approaching these artistic expressions as a way of expressing themselves, as an opportunity for telling others what is on their minds and to develop analytical skills in the process.

We are constantly looking for ways of receiving feedback from participants in our workshops, and close colaborators to improve their experience. We also check the engagement the community has with our content and adapt it accoridingly.

Developing communication skills in young learners enables them to get the most of their learning,  aiding them to acquire new knowledge and manage their emotions in healthy ways.

We are currently offering our workshops and promoting our contents in the area of Toluca and Metepec (Estado de Mexico, Mexico), where we seek constant feedback from community members when they get in touch with the problem. However, we are currently looking for ways to improve our solutions in order to produce a greater impact while building stronger foundations for our project to grow, such as ways of attracting volunteers or collect monetary resources.