|
|
|
1997
Grants
Centro de Estudios y Educación Indigena
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala: This project is part of The Center
for Indigenous Research and Education in Guatemala. Indigenous women's
self-esteem, already undermined by gender and ethnic prejudice, was
further assailed during 35 years of state-sponsored violence. The war
left thousands of widows, and spawned an upsurge of violence against
women. Their voices have been marginalized within the current Peace
Accords. This project focuses on training women, from five indigenous
groups, as leaders within 25 organizations in five departments of Guatemala.
They develop skills in issues of ethnicity, gender, self-esteem, and
political action. Their leadership within the women's organizations
strengthens the participative power of hundreds of women within the
organizations and thousands of women who benefit from the organization’s
respective projects.
Cúnamh:
Health and Political Conflict Project
Derry, Northern Ireland: This project offers services to relatives
of people murdered by the state to enable them to explore and understand
their feelings in relation to past traumatic experiences and to maximize
their potential, both as individuals and members of their communities,
to actively negotiate new routes for social change. The organization
defines mental health in the following manner: "People's mental health
is related to how they feel within personal relationships and within
society as a whole. People subjected to emotional or physical violence
are likely to experience a crisis of confidence and feelings of depression
and fear. This may be most severe when the experience is not openly
acknowledged and an image of normality is presented to the outside world."
Mozambican Association for Public Health
Maputo, Mozambique: AMOSAPU was formed in the
aftermath of a series of wars, as social, economic, and political conditions
deteriorated creating a chaos in which social dislocation, bereavement,
brutalization of survivors, injury to spirit and psyche, and physical
injuries are enormous. The organization created the Zimpeto Community-based
Psychosocial Project for Children and Youth in Post-war Crisis to survey
the needs of the community, provide psychological assistance to victims,
and organize and train workers in programming to directly assist the
youth in building a hopeful plan for the future. The program is powered
by people and resources from within the community to assure that the
approach is appropriate to the cultural, emotional, and psychological
needs of their youth.
Partnership for Community Mental Health
Baltimore, Maryland, USA: Designed to identify and develop community-based
interventions for immigrant survivors of state-sponsored violence, the
Partnership Program encourages members of the community to share openly
their experiences at public meetings with the goal of educating the
Latino Community and others about issues related to human rights abuses.
The Partnership was formed in a collaborative effort between the Centro
de la Comunidad and the Advocates of Trauma and Torture (ASTT). The
Partnership supports the activities of Promotores de Salud Mental (Mental
Health Promoters) as well as the provision of primary medical attention,
documentation of signs of abuse for asylum purposes, psychiatric assessment
and follow-up, and social service referral and advocacy.
Ranao Ecumenical Apostolate on Labor
Iligan City, Mindanao, Philippines: In the next 10 years, the
Philippines will attempt to become one of the newest industrialized
countries of the second world, putting immediate pressure on the labor
force as it calls for a reduction of labor costs to increase world trade,
directly affecting the livelihoods of thousands of families who depend
on these already insufficient wages. For the women who work the sub-contracted
and agency-hired jobs, exploitation is often imminent. Sensitive to
these realities, REAL's goal is to build a gender sensitive labor movement,
at the same time supporting and educating workers about their fundamental
human and legal rights in the workplace, including issues of unfair
labor practices, sexual harassment, and rape. With this grant, REAL
established a crisis center for counseling and a temporary shelter for
women whose meager wages must be squandered if they are to feed their
families in the countryside.
Return
to Top
English
to Spanish translations
courtesy
of Melisa Flores
©
2007, Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund for Mental Health & Human Rights
|
