Our project at El Agora proposes the use of methods that pretend to reinforce the citizenship role in the urban spheres. The citizenship practice is executed by different social actors who take part on diverse urban issues: security, violence, housing, education and safety. Such kind of actors are mainly represented by local residents, doctors, police officers, experts, psychologists, social workers, artists, teachers, city inspectors, journalists and everyone who is involved in specific urban problems. The social anchorage of each actor represents the starting point of our work.

That anchorage results from a combination of their point of view, their interests and their own urban mission. Communication between those social actors is favored by opening agreeable spaces for dialogues inside the city. In this way, we promote building networks for agreements based on the acceptance of the human diversity. These networks help to conceptualize the problem of the social actors as well as to find different alternatives to resolve their problems.

What have we done or what should we do in relation to security? Is it our problem or is it a problem of the government? Is it a problem that belongs to others or is it our problem in relation to others? Is it a problem of the police or is it of the community? Is it a problem of all of us? What does security mean for us? Who guarantees security for us? Who generates insecurity for us? What are we safeguarding against? What kind of security do we prefer? What is a safe city?

El Agora belongs to the Latin American Network of Justice and Peace, the Ibero-American and Caribbean Forum of Best Practices and European Forum for Citizenship Security.