Roughly 250 people from across the region are expected to take part, in person and online, in a two-day gathering aimed at turning grassroots resistance into a shared youth agenda ahead of SIGNIS’s world congress in Africa.
QUITO, Ecuador — On 17 and 18 July, a hybrid gathering of young people from across Latin America and the Caribbean will convene in this Andean capital to compare notes on a problem that, in various forms, touches nearly all of their countries: the extraction of oil, minerals and other raw materials, and the toll it takes on land, water and communities.
The event, called the Youth Leadership Encounter for Global Transformation, is organised by SIGNIS, the World Catholic Association for Communication, together with its Latin American and Ecuadorian chapters, the Universidad Amawtay Wasi, the Frente Nacional Antiminero and a coalition of social and environmental groups. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is listed as a supporting body. Sessions will run at the Amawtay Wasi auditorium and at the Casa Misioneras Lauritas, with roughly 50 to 70 participants attending in person and the remainder joining remotely — organisers put the expected total at around 250 people between the ages of 18 and 35.
The meeting takes its cue from a phrase organisers have adopted as its motto: “we are building alternatives in common.” It is being framed less as a conference than as a working session, structured around dialogue rather than lectures. Ahead of the event, participants were asked to submit one-minute videos answering a single question — what would an ordinary day look like if the world they inhabited were the one they dreamed of — which organisers plan to edit into a montage and screen at the opening.
The two-day programme is dense. Friday’s sessions, opening with a “Feria de Alternativas” — a fair showcasing community radio projects, agroecology initiatives and other grassroots enterprises — move into panels on development models and extractivism in Latin America, with reference points including Ecuador’s constitutional principle of Buen Vivir, or “good living,” as an alternative framework to conventional growth economics. Afternoon sessions turn to the position of human rights and environmental defenders in the region, a topic organisers describe in blunter terms elsewhere in the programme as the criminalisation of activists and the toll extractive industries take on families and food security. The day closes with workshops on communication and disinformation, memory and resistance through film, and a cultural evening described as an exchange of “poetics of resistance.”
Saturday shifts toward what organisers call proposals rather than diagnosis: sessions on participatory democracy, strategies for supporting communities affected by extractive projects, and a look at post-extractive economic models — community tourism, bio-enterprises and agroecology among them — informed in part by the experience of the Chocó Andino region northwest of Quito. A “Conexión Sur-Sur” panel is set to bring in indigenous communicators from Ecuador’s Kichwa people of Rukullakta, Argentina’s Mapuche confederation and Paraguay’s Asociación Indígena de Itapúa, among others, to compare strategies for defending territory across borders. A separate panel on Friday is due to include a delegation from Cotacachi, an Ecuadorian canton that has become a reference point in disputes over mining.
The gathering is meant to produce something concrete: delegates are expected to draft, collectively, a declaration by young defenders of human rights and the environment, along with commitments to keep the resulting network active after the event ends. A symbolic recognition, described in the programme as “Voces que tejen territorio” (“Voices that weave territory”), will be given to community communication initiatives, alongside certificates for participants of a community communication school.
Organisers describe the Quito meeting as one node within a larger structure rather than an endpoint. It is being held as part of the Latin American Communication Congress (COMLAC), organised by SIGNIS ALC, and is intended in part to carry positions formed by young Latin Americans to SIGNIS’s world congress in Africa later this year. A list of allied groups circulated with the programme includes indigenous and campesino federations such as Ecuarunari and the Coordinadora Nacional Campesina, environmental networks including the Red Eclesial Panamazónica (REPAM) and the Red Iglesias y Minería, solidarity-economy collectives, and several university partners.
Next steps outlined by organisers include a formal cooperation agreement with the Universidad Amawtay Wasi, the activation of local nodes through allied organisations, and the release of the “La tierra que soñamos” video call for submissions ahead of the meeting.