Letter of Guadalajara Guadalajara Educating City
Letter of Guadalajara XI International Congress of Educating Cities Blog Charter of Educating Cities Recommended Links International Association of Educating Cities Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) Red Mexicana de Ciudades Educadoras (REMCE)

XI INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATING CITIES
"Sports, Public Policy and Citizenship. Challenges of an Educating City"

Letter of Guadalajara

 

Recitals:

The 11th International Congress of Educating Cities held in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, on 22, 23 and 24 April 2010 with the thematic Sport, Public Policy and Citizenship. Challenges of an Educating City, brought together representatives of 68 educating cities of 14 countries, located in 4 continents of the planet, to endorse the value of sport, the physical activity and recreation in the construction of an educating city. It is also recognized the need to strengthen democracy through enrichment and diversification of experiences related to the body care and the access to healthier life styles, especially in urban areas, where the population lives growing constraints for sport practice and maintain daily exercise.

We declare that:

The Educating City is solidly based on twenty principles of its founding Charter, which suggests – in principles 1, 4, 8, 10 and 11-the importance of sport and physical activity, health education, as well as the need for spaces, facilities and public services appropriate to do so. Educating City is in harmony with the principles advocated by the International Charter of Physical Education and Sport signed in 1978 by the UNESCO, where the practice of sport and physical education is recognized as an essential human right.

Sport is an activity closely associated with the constitution and the practice of citizenship, so public policy should established as a normative framework the right of all citizens to take advantage of the sport and physical activity potential, but not only as indispensable factor for the promotion and preservation of health, but in the construction of the community link, through the processes of social inclusion, interaction competency and associated education values: equity, solidarity, teamwork, effort, among others.

Therefore, the scarcity of administrative, organizational and budget resources to provide spaces and facilities for sport and physical activity is a serious failure in the public resources management and in the urban development plans, in view of the serious problems of public health, security, social disintegration and even environmental degradation resulting from lack of sufficient conditions to place sport within urban life forms. The wasted opportunity is a high cost in order to reduce this problem when there is a lack of necessary conditions for the sports practice in all age groups. On the other hand, the absence of sports activities is a real deficit in holistic education which all population is entitled to.

Municipal governments and citizens must work together to reverse this trends followed by existing forms that physical and sports activities are structured, marked by their strong marketing expressions, the increasing privatization of public resources (infrastructure, services, public spaces), the perversion of its inclusive sense, since these factors act together against the accessibility, availability, quality and affordability of sport and physical activity, by encouraging social segmentation processes and diverse style fundamentalisms.

Against these social atomization trends, educating cities assume as fundamental responsibility the democratization of the sport practice in order to counteract the tendency to become in a massive show of passive spectators or in an elitist practice whose access is possible only for a few.

To do so, the educating cities are committed to:

  • Motivate the practice of physical education in private and public schools at all levels. for which will ensure the adequate infrastructure and skilled human resources;
  • Promote social communication forms through the public health units oriented to develop physics-sports activities with qualified personnel, as a disease prevention and as a therapeutic option for certain chronic diseases. As well, should promote transversality in public policies;
  • Develop public policies that ensure spaces for sport practice, which in turn constitute in socialization spaces, as well for pedestrian, bicycle and any form of urban not powered mobility, with the appropriate security and protection against all forms of violence, repression and traffic accidents caused by motor vehicles;
  • Raise awareness in private sector of the importance of sport and physical activity, ensuring that employees have the necessary to practice it, in accordance with 24th article of the Human Rights Charter, which considered the recreation as inalienable individual right and a basic human need;
  • Consider sport an integral part of the culture in which the inhabitants of cities lives; to do so, will promote leading mechanisms to promote the practice of sport taking into account the abilities and preferences of different sectors of the population based on their possibilities, preferences, work and family assignment, and all kinds of agents that affect sport activity as a pleasant and part of their daily lives;
  • Pay special attention to vulnerable groups, such as children, migrants, unemployed, people with different abilities or the elderly, to find the possible routes to be integrated in sports activities in a regular and routine manner, while social integration take place;
  • Promote the partnership through sports networks, which serve both as generators of human capital and strengthen social fabric.

 

By the current social, cultural and public health dynamic that experiences in the cities it is necessary the commitment to develop public policies in order to make the sport as part of their culture, a recognized form of citizenship construction and quality life improvement in the Educating Cities. 

 
Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, April 24, 2010.
Expo Guadalajara