Rehearsing change Faculty
Pachaysana's faculty is one of the most diverse of any study abroad program in the world. Our principal faculty are community educators and the Pachaysana staff, but we also invite teaching artists, university professors, and ancestral wisdom holders to co-teach our courses.
Community educators are long-time community counterparts who have gained significant experience facilitating educational processes over a period of no less than five years. They are community-based experts in numerous fields including sustainable agriculture, project development, popular pedagogy, art for social change and Andean/Amazon cosmovision. They work with Pachaysana staff to design, organize, and lead courses, bringing their unique knowledge, perspectives, and experiences to the process. Below you will find the bios of some of the central members of our faculty.
Get to Know our faculty
*May: top. Saul: bottom left. Edwin: bottom right
Pintag Amaru: May Aimacaña, Saul Bautista, Edwin Pilaquinga
Community educators from Pintag Amaru, experts in organic agriculture, popular pedagogy, arts for social chaNGe, project development, and ancestral memory
May Aimacaña, Saul Bautista, and Edwin Pilaquinga were all born and raised in Pintag (Mayra in the neighborhood of Santa Teresa and Saul and Edwin in Valencia). May is an architect and project development specialist. Her areas of specialty are sustainable design and social justice eduation. She believes that education is like creating family, and you will often see her come to class with her sons, Jemba and Kian. Saul is a bioconstruction expert and self-taught artist, musician, sculptor and metal-worker. His bioconstruction, artwork and activism are inspired by the Andean world, his ancestors and the nature that surrounds him. Edwin has dedicated his life to working in the fields and preserving his own cultivation of seeds. He is a graphic artist whose drawings are inspired by nature, human beings, and their relationship. He is also a researcher who is published in an academic journal and is currently involved in various projects that promote community organizing, popular pedagogy and social change.
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All three are active members of the Píntag Amaru Movement where they have participated in organic agriculture projects, environmental advocacy, theater for social change, and the different activities promoted by the movement. They have each played important leadership roles in our Rehearsing Change program, as students, facilitators, and community leaders.
Erika Cordova
Dancer, Member of Casa Machankara, Pachaysana Community educator/Teaching artist
Erika Córdova is a sociologist with a focus in development, as well as a dancer and a water guardian with our community partner Casa MachanKara. She has led many workshops with Rehearsing Change cohorts over the years, as well as with short-term groups, focused on the body as territory for action and revolution. She helps our diverse groups explore body expression, understand how our bodies can tell stories, and allowing our feelings to speak. In these explorations, she seeks to go leads us through the conflicts that our bodies experience as territories and the conflicts of our territories themselves, encompassing an global perspective in which Mother Earth and all her components play an important role.
Javier Cevallos Perugachi
Internationally-Recognized Artist, Artistic Coordinator of Fundacion Quito Eterno, Pachaysana Teaching-Artist and Board member
Javier Cevallos Perugachi is an actor, playwright, poet, teacher and researcher with over 20 years of experience in theatre. He studied and worked with the group La Espada de Madera, also training with the renowned theatre company Malayerba and the Argentine puppeteer, Sergio Mercurio. Since 1999 he has directed his own theatrical endeavors with the puppet theatre troupe El Retablo del Diablo Ocioso and the Fundación Quito Eterno, with whom he is using theatre as a means toward a better understanding of Ecuadorian history and identity. Over the last 10 years, he has worked with various theatre groups, both in Ecuador and abroad. In 2008 he published his first play, El Danzante. He is also a published poet with two collections: La Ciudad que se devoró a si misma (2001) y C (2005). Javier has a BA in Communication Arts and Literature (Universidad Catolica de Quito), a post graduate certificate in Performing Arts Theory (Universidad Central del Ecuador) and an MA in Hispanic Studies/Philology (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid). He is currently the Artistic Coordinator of the Fundación Quito Eterno and widely known for his portrayal of the historical/mythological characters of El Diablo and El Danzante. His current areas of research are the study of collective memory, community development and the management and sustainability of cultural projects.
Bboy Purple Haze
Hiphop artist & Breakdancer, Member of Ayllu Nina Shunku, PAchaysana Community Educator/Teaching Artist
Bboy Purple Haze (Heins Ismael Pozo San Andres) has been a graffiti artist, b-boy, and activist in the ranks of Quito's hip-hop community for fifteen years. He is part of different *kultural collectives, including Ayllu Nina Shunku (ANS), KNK, Nunkuii Zulu (Chapter Ekuador), Vandals Valle Verde (3V), and Andamos Decorando Quito (ADQ). He has also organized and managed many events that have fostered the growth of hiphop knowledge and the hiphop community, such as Jam Hiphop, Thusuy Iwias, Pintada en Bruto, Nunkuii Zulu Radio, and other small graffiti and breaking events. He is passionate about teaching his art and helping to strengthen Ecuadorian ancestral identities through this tool called hiphop. He has studied Plastic Arts, is currently studying Psychology, and has participated in various workshops of different topics to strengthen his knowledge. His dream is to create a hiphop school in Quito's marginalized neighborhoods to give young people an opportunity to live a better life through all its elements.
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*In Quito, many social justice/hiphop organizations replace "c" with "k" in recognition of the indigenous languages of the region (For example: Quito was originally written "Kitu").
Marleen Haboud
Professor of Linguistics at the catholic university of quito, Pachaysana instructor and board member
Marleen Haboud is professor of linguistics, sociolinguistics and research methods at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Since 2005 she is a UNESCO consultant and Visiting Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (España). She has worked on several projects related to sociolinguistic studies, literacy and bilingual education. She is director of the Oralidad Modernidad project, which seeks to determine, through interdisciplinary research, the vitality of native languages and oral tradition as well as support these languages’ preservation and revitalization. Her areas of interest are language contact; the vitality, conservation, loss and revitalization of minority languages as related with educational programs and educational/communication practices. Her research has also explored other themes, including intercultural education, identity, language and culture, intercultural communication and linguistic and education policies. She has published in numerous journals (international and national), and her book, "Quichua y Castellano en los Andes Ecuatorianos, los efectos de un contacto prolongado," was first published in Spanish in 1998 and in English in 2003. She is co-author of the World Atlas of Endangered Languages ​​(UNESCO 2010), the Sociolinguistic Atlas of the peoples of Latin America ( UNICEF 2010) and the Handbook of Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas (Latin America and the Caribbean) (2014 ) .
Isc
MC, street artist, and educator at Ayllu Nina ShunkU, Pachaysana Teaching artist and board member
Isaac Peñaherrera Yela, better known as Master ISC, has loved art since he was a child. Throughout his life, he has developed skills in various areas of art, including rap, "hip hop theater," graffiti, and ancestral drumming. He has more than 14 years of experiencing in generating community-based cultural programming and is also a founding member of our partner community Ayllu Nina Shunku. He emphasizes the importance strengthening of the memory, history and identity of Ecuador's ancestral peoples from Andean, Amazonian, and Afro backgrounds. His goal is to explore the infinite power of hip hop in liberating and helping oppressed people. He has travelled throughout Latin America presenting his rap music, his new "hip hop theater" show, and representing Ecuador's hip hop/arts community in international conferences. With Pachaysana, he has given workshops on art for social change, graffiti, beatboxing, and ancestral drum-making, as well as leading the creation of murals in many of our other rural and urban partner communities.