Accompaniment of marginal community sectors; strengthening FUNDAHMER’s institutional reach
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In previous years, FUNDAHMER has had, as part of its infrastructure, an area dedicated to the accompaniment and formation of youth groups, resulting in the establishment of a network of rural and urban youth called “Acción y Vida” in 2008. Since 2011, because of financial restrictions, FUNDAHMER has not been able to follow up with these groups formally, although they are always part of community celebrations and activities. It has been a time of more independent organization and activities for the youth, but given the current situation of violence and lack of opportunities for young people in the country, FUNDAHMER hopes to resume its accompaniment in a formal, structured way. Specifically, they hope to accompany work around violence prevention and to be part of a movement called “Educating for a Culture of Peace” among the youth groups of Christian Base Communities in El Salvador.
To do this, they plan to create and carry out an educational and formative process based in the SEE-JUDGE-ACT methodology of the Christian Base Communities focused on breaking the cyclic reproduction of structural violence among the younger generation and promoting identity and youth empowerment.
They will support and accompany youth groups in the activities that are already part of their plans, especially focusing on recreation and artistic and cultural expression as a way of working against the spread of violence in communities. Finally, they will focus on strategic alliances with other youth networks that work in favor of life and peace, to create processes together that will help generate safer communities in solidarity with each other.
Finally, they will focus on strategic alliances with other youth networks that work in favor of life and peace, to create processes together that will help generate safer communities in solidarity with each other.
Together with recreating a team for youth accompaniment within FUNDAHMER, they also hope to deepen and consolidate the formation process that they have spent years facilitating among communities’ women’s groups and committees. They hope to initiate a new phase of accompaniment in which they will continue to empower the reflective, creative, organizational, and productive capacities of the women to encourage integral and sustainable development in the communities, based on a new vision and understanding of themselves as women and their contribution to the life and development of their communities from a place of equal and just relationships.
The changes FUNDAHMER hopes to make are oriented, initially, around women’s autonomy. The hope is to empower – as a starting point – women’s leadership and autonomy so that they can realize their potential to become managers, case workers, and agents of change in their communities. Women’s empowerment will contribute positively to a community culture based on equal relationships that affect the conditions and quality of life for themselves, their families, and their communities.
In the first year of this effort, 2015, we have continued to work with three specific women’s groups who have a strong sense of identity, solidarity, who have a critical spirit, and a level of autonomy, creativity, and managerial capacity. They already have positive effects on their family and community economies by way of artisanal production and alternative commercialization. In this practice, they are transforming their vision of what development is and discovering a new way to build an economy.
In the second year of the project, 2016, we hope to include new community elements in the process. We hope to consolidate a network of artisanal women’s groups, which will promote a new vision of development in their communities. A diversity of life-giving and economically productive initiatives will continue to be accompanied, which are linked to their identity as rural women and come from a vision of an economy of solidarity.
In the third year, and as a long term goal, we hope to help build communities of solidarity and autonomy, in which women and men in relationships of equality are able to participate and collectively build their own wellbeing. This work will come from a place of their rural, land-based identity and livelihoods, working towards a culture of peace, focused on an economy of solidarity.
FUNDAHMER sees these two accompaniment efforts as essential to their work with the Christian Base Communities and other organized, rural communities in El Salvador. Women and youth are two groups often marginalized by current social structures, even within these communities, and FUNDAHMER’s work to empower and facilitate spaces for these groups contributes to building a community culture where everyone participates in creating and realizing a better way of living with each other and on the Earth, inspired by the historic struggle of the Salvadoran people and faith in our God’s project of life for us.
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