TREES Challenge: Revealing classisms - 2025

The classism is the white elephant in our interactions with other people. Often, this form of discrimination is hidden in social structures and manifests itself in everyday life. Recognizing and revealing classism in our environment enables us to questioning our own attitudes and prejudices, as well as understanding how it affects people in a multiplicity of ways.

Want to research classism to understand its scope and work towards a more just society?

Using different methodologies of participatory research, students will inquire about attitudes, perceptions, relationships or practices related to classism in order to design participatory and collaborative strategies that will strengthen social cohesion and solidarity.

Participants will learn to:

  1. Apply appropriately methodologies of participatory action research.
  2. Use strategies to cooperate and resolve tensions arising from collective action.
  3. Identify and critically analyze attitudes, perceptions, relationships or practices that promote or mitigate classism.

This challenge is aimed at:

Students of any discipline, from master's degree or undergraduate, of fifth semester or higher. Each team must be made up of five students of legal age and have a university professor to lead the team throughout the challenge.

The challenge

It is divided into five phases that guide the teams in designing and implementing a participatory research in their immediate environment to identify and critically analyze attitudes, perceptions, relationships or practices that promote or mitigate classism. Each team will work from collective way and with the people who are part of the environment where the research is carried out during the five phases:

  1. In the first In this phase, the teams will choose the environment where they intend to conduct the participatory action research.
  2. In the second, The participants will discuss with the people in their chosen environment whether and to what extent they wish to participate.
  3. In the third, The teams will define, together with the people in the chosen environment, the research question and the methods they will use to solve it.
  4. In the fourth, will conduct the investigation.
  5. In the fifth phase, the teams synthesize and consolidate the entire learning process into two deliverables.

During the fifth phase, there will be a face-to-face meeting of all the teams at the Universidad de los Andes on the following dates November 1 and 2. In this space, the teams will share their experiences during the development of the challenge and will receive feedback from expert teachers and other participants. On November 2nd each team will make a final presentation to a panel of jurors and to the other teams.

There will be virtual master classes on methodologies and principles of participatory action research and on concepts and issues related to classism by university professors.

Financing

In this edition of the TREES Challenge: Revealing Classisms, we will select about 20 teams. Each selected team will receive $200,000 COP to support expenses directly related to the conduct of participatory research.

We will grant scholarships for teams made up of students who study and reside in cities outside of Cundinamarca and who have developed their research in a timely manner, meeting the established dates and requirements for each phase. This scholarship covers the housing, the food, the local transportation and the tickets round trip to attend the presential meeting the November 1 and 2 at the Universidad de los Andes.

Application process

The application process will be open between May 13 and June 20, 2025. The friday, july 4 we will announce the teams selected to take part in the challenge.

Teams that meet the requirements and complete all activities in the process will receive a certificate of participation issued by the Universidad de los Andes Continuing Education Department.

To apply for the challenge, the teams already formed must fill out the Application Form, attach the Proposal for mentoring mentors and the Letter of motivation.

The teams will be evaluated by a panel of jurors from the TREES initiative, according to the evaluation criteria of the Proposal of Accompaniment and the Letter of Motivation.

Commitments and responsibilities

Teams selected to participate in the challenge must sign and complete the Commitment Agreement. Students must have an average of two hours per week for the development of the research.

Intellectual Property

The persons participating in the challenge and the participatory research will be co-authors or co-owners of the documents, presentations, conclusions and deliverables they produce. The TREES team will offer support in the disclosure of some of these and will give visibility to the authors who participated in their creation.

As indicated in the Engagement Agreement, individuals participating in the challenge and participatory research must provide permission for use and dissemination to the Ford Foundation and Universidad de los Andes.

Please refer to the general guidelines for preparing the student team's motivation letter and the mentor teacher's support plan, which you must upload in PDF format in the corresponding sections: GeneralGuidelines.pdf

If you have any additional questions, please please do not hesitate to contact us by mail at [email protected]

Apply now!