Popular education and social transformation in Nicaragua

Abstract

Peter Mayo interviews Maria Zuniga, Director of the Centre for Information and Advisory Services in Health (CISAS), Managua. -- Nicaragua has captured the imagination of several educators and other cultural workers striving for social change because of the many initiatives in transformative popular education carried out in the country before and, most particularly, after the Sandinista-led revolution of 1979. The most important initiatives were the Literacy Cruzada, carried out soon after the revolution, and its sequel, the popular basic education programme (EPB)I. Important popular education initiatives were also carried out in the area of health education. Maria Hamlin Zuniga has been involved in primary health tare programmes in Central America since 1968. She is a founding member of the Regional Committee for the Promotion of Community Health and the International People's Health Council. She is presently the Director of the Nicaraguan NGO, Centra de Informacion y Servicios de Asesoria en Salud (CISAS). In this interview, which took place during her visit to Toronto in 1991, Maria Zuniga draws on her first hand experience of popular education in Nicaragua to discuss some of the issues related to the field.