THE ROAD

The projects shared by this new European development education collective -ITECO, CIDAC, CIP and HEGOA- linked together to form the diamond shape of an aluminium "kite" -Western technology must always be taken into account-. They covered the frame with a light cloth of educational ideas capable of rising softly with any European wind current.

The "kite" flew gracefully but its flight was too low. It could barely be seen in the European skies. It was too narrow and its surface too small to catch all the winds of solidarity and participation that are loose in the world.

The development education winds in the North are good but too light. It was necessary to seek out the winds of the South and their more favourable popular education currents.

Taking these factors into account, the four organisations decided to extend the surface of the kite and create a modular structure, a polygon open to organisations from the North and the South. The cloth had to be light, to include all colours and to extend out in a long tail, useful for broadening participation. Even in this form, and flying higher, the kite was no more than a dot of colour in the grey European sky.

But very soon the people of Indonesia -BIMAESW- joined in the effort and replaced the aluminium with bamboo; Cape Verde -CITI-HABITAT- contributed its Creole winds; Guatemala -PRODESSA- adorned the kite with its Mayan colours and symbols, as well as offering with its calendar the best days for flying; in Brazil -ETAPAS- the arduous task of enlarging the frame and surface of the kite was eased with participatory jute ropes, giving life with to the crucial moments of lift off with their Afro-American bongo drums. New technologies like the Internet allowed for the collecting of colours and ideas from all parts: from Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, the Congo, Senegal, Cape Verde, Angola, South Africa, Benin, India, Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, France, Spain...

Educators from different corners of the world came together in the Basque Country and lifted a multicolour, polygon-shaped kite into the sky, like a mosaic of contributions that, when the winds are right, can be seen in all the skies of Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. Local networks were created that always fly a smaller kite for when the largest one is only a little dot, being too far away from other skies.

The POLYGONE International Network has lifted development education off the ground by joining it with popular education, making true the brotherhood between the peoples of the North and South.