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Villa Maria

Argentina

Villa María is a centennial city of approximately 90,000 inhabitants in the centre of Argentina. It is crossed by two routes that connect the country from north to south and from east to west. Its main industries are agricultural, and it produces almost 4,000,000 litres of milk daily. It offers educational, health and cultural service options for the entire region. Villa María exhibits an activity rate of 55.60% (the national rate is 46.3%). Unemployment is a problem in the city, especially in its most populated neighbourhoods. The city has five public middle schools and another six private schools; its 27 primary schools are insufficient to cover the high demand for entrants to the 1st year of secondary school.

There is a demand from citizens to the authorities for greater security, especially in neighbourhoods far from the city centre. In this sense, the city has a monitoring centre located in an old building that controls security on the streets through 270 cameras located in different parts of the city. During 2021, the Monitoring Centre detected more than 2,500 irregularities that contributed to the actions of the security forces.

Villa María is an areas with one of the largest concentration of automobiles in the country. It has registered almost 55k cars and more than 47k motorcycles. The downtown area concentrates traffic congestion peaks during school dismissal times. There is a high rate of traffic accidents, which led in 2018 to declare a road emergency and put into action a series of initiatives aimed at reducing accidents.

Formal and Non-formal Learning Infra-structure

Municipalities do not have their own jurisdiction in formal education in our Argentina[1]. However, they can voluntarily create support, complement and articulate programs with schools. Villa María has 13 Family Promotion Centres. They develop actions in the territory and involve families and the community with a pedagogical profile with more than 1,200 children from 45 days to 3 years of 925 families in 52 rooms strategically located in peripheral urban neighbourhoods. There they receive daily maternal education from 160 specialized personnel. The Department of Youth and Adults and the School Completion Program allows those who left school to finish and obtain their diploma, with the participation of more than 1,000 students each year distributed in 80 work groups. Other preventive programs support the educational process tending to reduce absences and school dropouts. There are also programs to complement the educational process, such as Educational Sports, Swimming in Schools and Ahora los Chicos (children's citizen participation program).

The academic offer provided by the 4 non-university higher education institutions that operate in the city includes training in various branches of knowledge covering technical degrees, as well as various teaching staff in fields that include: visual arts, English, physical education, history, technological education. In addition, two Public Universities and three Private Universities operate in the city with a wide academic offer of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, as well as short, distance education courses. The National University of Villa María has 43 undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate courses and has more than 15,000 students enrolled in its academic offer.

There are also initiatives from the Municipality and other institutions that enrich non-formal education opportunities: Clubs, Media Library, Techno Library, Academies. There is also informal education: the surroundings of the “Parque de la Vida”, the 10 km of “Costanera”, the “Parque Pereyra and Domínguez”, and the sports fields.

Learning City Developments

In 2016, Villa María became part of the UNESCO World Network of Learning Cities, being the first city in Argentina to join the Network.

In 2017, the city hosted the Latin American Learning Cities Meeting, forming the Mercosur Learning Cities network. The event included the participation of 40 representatives of Learning Cities from various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Also present were representatives of the Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) Raúl Valdés Cotera, and Atilio Pizarro of the Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC UNESCO).

This meeting in Villa María articulated work between the Learning Cities Network and the Global Action Program for Sustainable Development (GAP). Several of the points of the Villa María Declaration are related to learning to develop sustainable communities. The document, which sets agenda agreements for the world meeting of the network that took place in Cork (September 2017), includes the decision to form a network that brings together the Mercosur Learning Cities under the coordination of Villa María[2]. In September of the same year, Villa María received the UNESCO City of Learning award. In 2018, the Learning City Indicators Report was presented, following the document Characteristics of Learning Cities, Beijing 2013. In 2019, Villa María was appointed coordinator of the Literacy and Family Reading Cluster of the GNLC, together with Santiago, Mexico. In 2021, a publication was prepared with the work of this cluster on the subject of literacy and family reading in the region.

Key Activities in the Learning Cities field

In Villa María, the Municipal Institute for Lifelong Training and Learning was created in December 2019, with a mission is to centralize the activities of planning, preparation, formulation, administration, coordination, execution, monitoring and evaluation of the Programs and Projects with financing or subsidies and/or provincial, national and international technical assistance exclusively destined for education, efficiency and modernization of the municipal educational service.

The key activities within Villa María as a city of learning are: programs related to formal education: Centres for Family Promotion, Youth and Adult Learning Network, Ahora los Chicos, and  Educational sports. Cultural Programs include the promotion of reading in the Municipal Library (Media Library); Workshops of Being Art and Part; School Bands, the Symphony Orchestra of the City (an agreement between the Municipality and the National University of Villa María). The Tecnoteca is a space dedicated to the promotion of science, innovation, communication. The Ministry of Health works on prevention as a learning process through primary health education and care in a decentralized system, and vaccination in schools. The Municipal Employment Office is responsible for articulating national and provincial programs and initiatives by local entrepreneurs to improve employment rates. The Secretariat of Social Inclusion and Territory works decisively in raising awareness and training for gender equity and the inclusion of the most neglected sectors, especially through the Municerca. These are territorial spaces for the decentralization of management so that the programs of each Secretariat arrive more efficiently.

Key Priority Areas for Future Development

The priority areas for future development in the city are:

• Sustainability to ensure that initiatives, actions and programs are developed in the fulfilment of the SDGs. In this sense, the European Union is subsidizing an Integrated and Sustainable Development program in the city with €2.8m won competitively, showing the city's commitment to sustainability and the 2030 agenda.
• Improving school retention levels by promoting quality learning that is supported by different programs of the Ministry of Education, through culture and the promotion of science, and by increasing the supply of schools.
• Strengthen the liveability of the city by advancing the resolution of  problems of employment, security and inclusion of citizens.

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^[1] The Argentine Formal Educational System is structured in three compulsory levels: initial (3 to 5 years old), primary (6 to 11 years old) and intermediate (12 to 17 years old) of provincial jurisdiction. The Ministry of Education of the Nation is responsible for unifying educational programs throughout the country to allow the exchange of students within the system and ensure the validity of degrees throughout the national territory. Higher Education is the responsibility of the National Government.

^[2] https://uil.unesco.org/es/texto/villa-maria-declaration