Registration is now open for the second cohort of the Diplomatura Cultivando Soberanía, a university extension program of the Faculty of Social Work and Health Sciences of the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, with general coordination by Universidad Liberté. It is a virtual program, 100% subsidized through community support. The program runs from June 19 to December 18, 2026, with 108 clock hours distributed across seven synchronous sessions and weekly asynchronous practical activities. Enrollment is capped at 1,000 students, with the possibility of expansion based on demand.
A program to cultivate autonomy
The diplomatura invites participants to think about food, land, and waste not as commodities but as common goods sustained by neighbors and communities. It offers concrete tools for growing food in small spaces, building domestic and community compost systems, preserving and fermenting using recovered knowledge, constructing with materials others discard, and caring for the solidarity networks that hold it all together.
"Food as a cultural, political, and affective good; land as a bond, not a commodity," summarizes the program's official statement.
Curriculum: six thematic areas
The curriculum is organized around six areas that run through the everyday life of the popular economy and territorial organizing:
- Food Sovereignty and Community Autonomy: the right to food, producer and consumer networks, community kitchens, and experiences of territorial self-management.
- Popular Agroecology and Growing in Small Spaces: gardening on balconies, patios, terraces, inside prisons, or in community kitchens, using agroecological practices and native seeds.
- Composting, Recycling, and Conscious Waste Management: closing the waste cycle through everyday practices, at home and in community.
- Artisan Foods, PUPAAs, and a Culture of Good Eating: ferments, preserves, baked goods, and regulations for artisan agroecological production.
- Sustainable Habitat and Building with Recovered Materials: bio-construction, alternative energies, water management, and habitat as a right.
- Ecology of Care and Solidarity Networks: gender perspective, ethics of care, and the building of community networks.
Faculty
The diplomatura draws on a team of 15 instructors from Argentina. Academic coordination is led by Lic. Ricardo Augman, Dra. Diana Esther Márquez, and Mauricio Matías Navarro. The faculty brings together voices from agroecology, the popular economy, territorial art, community health, and education in contexts of incarceration: Ariel Guas, Silvia Ethel Pessolano, Xavier «Pampa» Aguirreal, Jorge Taylor, Sofi Cedrón, and Jorgelina Porta, alongside several members who teach from their own territorial experience within Cooperativa Liberté.
Open to the whole community
The program requires no prior studies. It is aimed at incarcerated people and those who have been released, families and community organizations, workers in the popular economy, cooperatives, community kitchens and snack programs, community gardens, health professionals, social workers, agronomists and educators, as well as teachers, students, and anyone interested in agroecology and food sovereignty.
For those in penitentiary units in Buenos Aires province where Universidad Liberté has a presence, sessions also reach participants via FM radio and through University Student Centers — a concrete way of guaranteeing the right to education behind prison walls.
Those who took the 2025 edition can return
The first cohort completed the diplomatura in 2025 and left behind an active network of students and territorial projects. For this second edition, those who already participated are welcome to re-enroll: each cohort renews the faculty team, updates the materials, and deepens the six thematic areas.
Institutional endorsements
The diplomatura is backed by the Federación Argentina de Cooperativas de Crédito (FACC), Víctimas por la Paz, the Asociación Argentina de la Justicia de Ejecución Penal (AAJEP), the Corporación Activos por los Derechos Humanos, the Observatory of the Penal System and Human Rights of the University of Barcelona, the Sociedad Argentina de Justicia Restaurativa, the Instituto Brasilero de Derechos Humanos, and the Academia Latinoamericana de Derecho Penal y Penitenciario (ALDP).
How to register
Registration is already open and is completed through the form available on the program's official page. Inquiries can be sent by email to formacion@universidadliberte.org and by WhatsApp at +54 9 223 678-9264.
Those who complete 75% of the sessions and submit the practical activities will receive a University Extension Diploma issued by the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, through the Extension Secretariat of the Faculty of Social Work and Health Sciences.
Full details about the program schedule, curriculum, and faculty are available on the diplomatura's information page.
