Campus Saltillo

Civic Engagement and Democracy

Bimester Project: Second Part

MGP MEP Machely Flores

06-10-2014

Erick Valdés Juárez 1380109

Daniel Alonso Fernández Sandoval 1380747

Juan Carlos Flores Oyervides 999051

The first part of this social project took on an introduction to what the Francisco I. Madero

Community center was, and how it works. With an optimistic attitude we hoped to get great results

to share with the community and with you, our readers.

I. Engineering approach

One of the focus points of this project is to find problems which mark the visited neighborhood.

Once this is done, the need to prioritize between them has to be attended, so a decision about

which ones we can contribute with is made.

Having meet Rocio Segura the “Community Center” administrator, we gathered in a brief meeting

with the purpose of determining the way we could approach and treat problems in the

communitarian center. Assuming a meeting would took place in our next visit (with the head

members of the neighborhood as Rocio told us), we elaborated a brief, yet effective set of questions

to help guide our assumptions of what the problems were, into a more realistic and accurate

oncoming to the situation. This is the set of questions meant to be made to the neighborhood

committee:

Translated to English this poll is:

With this set of questions we wanted to be able to measure the degree of satisfaction from the

neighborhood´s residents towards the Community Center and from their society. From this point

we could apply our knowledge as students of Industrial Engineering and System.

What does being an Industrial Engineer imply?

An Industrial Engineer is a professional with the mathematical, financial, organizational and

systematic knowledge that can be used to make improvements. As students from the ITESM

(Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey) we have been educated to act both

as the professional beings we are becoming, so as citizens whose involvement in the community has

to leave a good mark. The purpose of the Citizen Engagement class was to settle ourselves not just

as judges of the way our society works, but as participative members of it.

II. Community Center

In our second visit to the center we expected to meet the neighborhood`s committee as Rocio told

us. Nevertheless, the committee was not gathered together, instead the meeting decrease to five

people: we (the three students), Rocio Segura and the neighborhood president “Profesor Juan de

Dios G.”

II. The problem

With a sad face, fallen eyebrows and deep glasses Juan de Dios sit at the header of the table we

were around. While explaining him the problem, we saw his gestures become rigid, defensive and

taciturn, one could tell he was a reserved one. While we were explaining him the part of the project

were we would propose a solution or improvement based on what was at our reach to achieve and

provide, he rudely started confronting the idea as if we were some kind of organization that had

promised something before and never did anything to make it true. “Solutions? He asked, there are

no solutions, the Government cannot give any solutions, they just won`t listen”. Based on our

experience we can make two assumptions about this man: whether he had spent a life of struggle

to overcome life`s difficulties and never a hand appeared to help him; or he is one of those

conflictive individuals who instead of helping achieve the goal they pursue, they just make it difficult

and delay activities. The man practically said there`s nothing for students to do in the society, he

clearly does not understand the force and power universities have. Universities are the motor that

makes the country run; still and all we must stick to our project and continue presenting the facts

and opinions he mentioned. In words of Juan de Dios, “Francisco I. Madero” is a neighborhood that

does not have economic necessities, the security is quite good because there is constant police

patrolling and all the members of the blocks know themselves, so whenever they spot irregular or

suspicious activities they communicate it to the authorities. The structure of the public walls, streets

and parks is in constant maintenance due to the good communication between the Community

Center`s administrator and the City Hall. There are speed limiters which control the few but constant

traffic in the zone. The luminaries are in good condition, fully working excepting three. After all the

previous information was given to us, we went further and asked him about the Center. We wanted

to know why in our current visit and in the last one it was practically empty. The man handed us

what he believed the cause to be. He mentioned people from the zone belongs to different political

parties, so they see the activities of the Community Center as meetings to promote the current

leading party and acts related to it; at this point Rocio complemented him explaining us that she

was in charge of publicity (publicity for her consists on pieces of paper pasted in the walls of the

mini stores surrounding the zone). The following talk was merely trash and repetitive, so there`s no

need to go any further with it. By this point we had one fulminant question running in our minds: If

they know everyone in the zone, why don´t they focus the Center´s activities according to the age,

needs, gender and interests of the people?

III. Facing the “problem”

We decided by our own to applicate some of the surveys we printed for the activity with the

neighbors of the “Community Center Francisco I. Madero”. We wanted them to answer them

anonymously, but by the time we located our first subject, he preferred us to write the answers for

him. So from that moment, the methodology for us follow was to just ask and write the answers by

ourselves. We translated the results in the following page; the data was introduced in an Excel Sheet

that allows us to manage the data better for its understanding.

Survey results

People reached 30

Ages categories Number of persons

5 to 15 5

16 to 24 3

25 to 30 4

31 to 40 8

40 + 10

We have a different variety of answers, so we filtrated those who had the most entries and made the following chart.

Problem Quantity

Bad-shape luminaries 6

Better sports areas 3

Potholes 11

Cleaning 4

Lack of variety of activities 2

Satisfaction Level

10 1

7 to 9 24

5 to 6 5

4 - 0

5 to 1517%

16 to 2410%

25 to 3013%31 to 40

27%

40 +33%

Number of persons

5 to 15

16 to 24

25 to 30

31 to 40

40 +

6

3

11

4

2

Bad-shape luminairies

Better sports areas

PotholesCleaning

Lack of variety ofactivities

Quantity

0

5

10

15

20

25

10 7 TO 9 5 TO 6 4 -

1

24

5

0

Level

IV. Our proposal

After we saw the results of our surveys, we were amazed how well the people felt in their

community, because we went looking at first for major problems as insecurities or lack of

government attendance. But the neighbor’s first impression was that their community presented

minor problems, like the ones that allow the community look better, but maybe there aren’t

priorities or urgent needs.

We could see that as Mr. Juan de Dios told us, one of the principles needs they detected was the

bad-shape luminaries. But the one that emerged as the biggest problem of the community were the

potholes that the community presented in most of the streets. So the decision was to focus mainly

on this two problems.

For the potholes, we think that the best way to solve the problems the

pavement presented were because the bad application of the asphalt. So

maybe the first step would be to remove the actual asphalt, make a clean of

the soil there, and after that star the carpeting with the asphalt. The way to

achieve a pothole-free street, would be to maintain the same pressure in the

path with a machine that could allow street-wide reach for a constant

application.

For the luminaires we could heard that the mainly factors this luminaries

star to fail, is because the rain factors. So maybe the main malfunctions presented were that the

electrical components were damaged by the water leaking. As

we were researching, this modern lamps are composed by led

panels, that benefits with a brighter light. This could also help

to keep a better control of the street, making possible to

observe clearly during the night. This luminaries are in

majority made by high impact durable ABS plastic that could

support climatologic damages as hail, lightning, rain, etc.

Also the cost of repairs aren´t that high due to 2 main factors,

the durability of the frame and the rate of fail. So it could be

the best way to face their problems.

V. Conclusions

What we learned in these project is that we needed to search for the community center located in

Francisco I Madero, we need to call to government so we can redirect to the number of the

headquarters of the community centers then take some instructions to get in to the right colony.

Then when we tried to arrive to that colony we decided to take a taxi and the guy of the taxi doesn’t

knew very good where the place is. When we arrived we talked with the uncharged of the

community center and she was very kind. Also we learned how to approach to people, that there

are many different ways in how to talk to the people so the message that we wanted to deliver

would be understand by the receptor, by the other hand we noticed that not every person was

heard opened to share their opinion. To conclude these project helped us to gain experience in the

treat with persons that in one future we could use it when we are in our jobs, also the way to talk

to other persons so the information that we want to transmit arrive correctly and to not depend in

other persons to achieve or arrive to our destinations and goals.