{"id":778,"date":"2025-11-03T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trees.uniandes.edu.co\/?p=778"},"modified":"2026-06-02T21:51:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T02:51:58","slug":"reto-trees-investigar-junto-a-las-comunidades-transforma-la-manera-de-entender-las-desigualdades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trees.uniandes.edu.co\/en\/blog\/reto-trees-investigar-junto-a-las-comunidades-transforma-la-manera-de-entender-las-desigualdades\/","title":{"rendered":"TREES Challenge: researching with communities transforms the way we understand inequalities"},"content":{"rendered":"

The TREES Challenge: Revealing Classism (2024-2025) brought together 120 undergraduate and master's students from different disciplines and from eight departments of the country in an immersive and collaborative experience aimed at designing strategies to strengthen social cohesion. Through participatory research methodologies, the teams explored attitudes, perceptions and practices related to classism in everyday contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Final meeting of participants of the TREES Challenge (2024-2025)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More than an academic exercise, the challenge opened a space to connect research, critical and ethical thinking and collective work. Rather than viewing communities as objects of study, the participatory research methodology promoted processes of dialogue and co-creation in which the people involved were able to reflect on classist attitudes and how they reproduce inequalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Irma Flores, associate professor at the Faculty of Education of the Universidad de los Andes, one of the main contributions of this approach is that it allows \u201cnot only to bring a topic such as classism to a community, but also to talk to that community to see what they understand by classism\u201d. From this perspective, participatory research not only produces knowledge: it also strengthens the social fabric and creates more horizontal relationships between researchers and communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch the reel and find out why participatory research was key to #RetoTREES<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge was aimed especially at students in training, precisely because this academic moment can open spaces for critical exploration and interdisciplinary creativity. As Paula Jaramillo, TREES teaching leader, points out, it is \u201ca moment in life in which they can perceive the classisms around them and try not to reproduce them and also do something about them\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge was developed in six phases that guided the teams in the design and implementation of participatory action research in their own environments. Throughout the process, students identified and critically analyzed attitudes, relationships, perceptions and practices that reproduce - or challenge - dynamics of classism in everyday life. For the two editions of the Challenge, 2024 and 2025, the last phase culminated in a face-to-face meeting at the Universidad de los Andes, where the teams shared their findings, discussed their methodologies and reflected collectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond presenting results, the final meeting allowed students to connect practical experience with theoretical, methodological and ethical discussions on how to do research with communities. As stated by Blas Zubir\u00eda Mutis, mentor of the Universidad del At\u00e1ntico, during the 2024 meeting, the process allowed participants to \u201clive a concrete research experience, using parameters established by TREES and linking them to the theoretical, methodological and epistemological reflection of participatory research\u201d. In the first edition of the Challenge, teams from Universidad del Norte, Universidad del Atl\u00e1ntico, El Colegio de M\u00e9xico and Universidad de los Andes developed research questions, designed methodologies and evaluated together with the communities whether this type of research was meaningful and useful for those who participated in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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TREES 2025 Challenge certificate delivery.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The projects developed during the challenge also showed how classism manifests itself in everyday scenarios. One of the teams from the Universidad del Atl\u00e1ntico investigated dynamics of classism and microclassism in Alameda del R\u00edo, an urban housing project that brings together people from different socioeconomic contexts. Through observation, interviews and surveys, the team identified how everyday practices - such as drying clothes in windows or the presence of street vendors - generate tensions related to social status and perceptions of exclusivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research showed how certain prejudices, towards informal activities and ways of inhabiting the space, reflect stereotypes and class barriers that generate tensions in coexistence. Beyond identifying these dynamics, the process allowed us to open conversations with the community about the ways in which these practices affect relations between neighbors and the perception of the \u201cother\u201d within the same territory. \u201cThrough surveys and interviews, we collected perceptions of exclusivity and prejudice towards informal activities such as street vending. These results will allow us to propose mitigation measures and foster understanding of classist attitudes,\u201d explained Andr\u00e9s Eduardo Miranda Pacheco, challenge participant and member of the #SOMOSUA team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n