MEC Centres
Following the creation of the MEC Centres in 2007 and their subsequent reinforcement, in 2010 the centres began to play a key role as territory-based coordinators due to their permanent collaboration with entities of the national government, departments and local authorities.
The MEC Centres provide room for education and cultural activities designed to facilitate access to education, scientific and technological innovation, and cultural services and products. They hereby contribute to the implementation of nationwide democratisation and decentralisation policies.
The Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) provides the learning and cultural contents for the promotion of science and technology, human rights and digital literacy, whereas the necessary resources regarding infrastructure and technology are provided by the intendencias (municipalities) and the State telecommunications company ANTEL.
The overall objective is to contribute to social integration and citizen education by operating each MEC Centre as a space for meetings, animation, exchange and access to cultural and learning contents, which are offered in a variety of forms, platforms and technologies. As pointed out in our previous report, achieving adult digital literacy through the implementation of a National Literacy Plan is one of the specific objectives of the MEC Centres.
Since 2015 another project, Uruguay escribe (Uruguay writes) has also been based at the Centres. Its workshops convey basic and advanced concepts, which may be applied to writing, for the draftingof literary contents, scripts (film, theatre, carnival, TV) etc., with a view to enhancing talent and developing vocation in the field of writing.
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“We have to resist the temptation of measuring for the sake of measuring. Measurements have to serve clearly described targets, so as to facilitate cost-effectiveness analysis and excellent accountability to citizens, and to move on to a co-production model of construction and shared evaluations.
As a result, the definition of the objectives and their follow-up may concentrate on collective identities, the construction of shared values, the regeneration of social ties and the development of community-led governance.
As the MEC Centres are strongly engaged in the building and practise of cultural citizenship, they appear to be ideal points of departure for the new government in order to find out, how much it can achieve in the five years ahead (2015/2019). Politics should not be seen as good management; instead, good management should serve politics.” Centros MEC en el territorio (The territory-based presence of the MEC Centres), May 2015.