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2000
Grants
Balay Integrated Rehabilitation Center
for Total Human Development Iligan City, Philippines
In the context of 21st century globalization, economic policy in
the Philippines has been directed at establishing the country as the
next, newly industrialized economy in Asia. As a result, workers and
peasants, in particular women workers, face high rates of unemployment,
displacement from agricultural self sufficiency, and increased stress
in the workplace including sexual abuse – in addition to continuing
counterinsurgency warfare. In the Iligan area workers have been caught
in the fighting between government forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front.
As
a past recipient of support from the Martín-Baró Fund (1995), the Balay
group continues to provide psychological and social support to women
and children struggling to survive these economic and military pressures.
This grant will enable the Center to develop an educational module to
promote mental health via workshops about mental health, training sessions
on stress management techniques, individual counseling sessions and,
most significantly, strategies for creating lasting support systems
among those in need. As in the past, women and children will be the
focus of this work.
Chiapas Community Defenders Network
Chiapas Mexico: Defensa Comunitaria is a project of the Chiapas
Community Defenders Network, a grassroots human rights group which has
over 9,000 community participants in six regions of Chiapas, and functions
primarily through seventeen "defenders" chosen by and responsible to
their own communities. Defensa Comunitaria will meet the need for mental
health services in rural Chiapas, with a particular focus on those issues
arising out of the military/political conflict in the region, and the
frequent abductions, imprisonment and sometimes torture of those identified
as peasant leaders. Other stressors include family separation, paramilitary
attacks on communal land, sexual assaults, domestic violence, and extreme
poverty. The consequences for individual and communal mental health
include post-traumatic stress, communal disaster stress, major depression,
and somatic disorders.
An
experienced licensed social worker will work with the indigenous communities
to facilitate a communal healing process utilizing various clinical
and indigenous mental health practices. Methods will include narrative
therapy, crisis management, community disaster relief and recovery,
stress management, psycho-social education, and culturally-appropriate
group therapy known as pláticas or "talking circles."
Fortaleza
de la Mujer Maya
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México: FOMMA is
a group of indigenous Mayan women who have organized to help poor women
and children who immigrate from their rural communities to the city,
where they face problems with marginalization, exploitative working
conditions, adapting to their new environment, and physical and mental
health. Immigration to the city is often a function of the low intensity
warfare that is being carried out in their rural communities. FOMMA
works to promote women's rights, improve their living conditions, provide
mental health assistance, and enhance their self-esteem. It provides
a number of workshops for its members on sewing, weaving, theater, dance,
health, and literacy, all of which are intended to help women live in
the city with fewer problems. 
The
Martín-Baró Fund will be providing funds to support the development
of a popular theater program whereby the women, via collective workshops,
will write, produce, and perform plays about their lives and experiences.
Through the development and preparation of these plays, the women are
expected to gain some mastery over their difficulties, become more conscious
of their abilities, become more aware of their rights and acquire the
self-confidence to defend their rights and, as a result, experience
improved mental health.
Ibdaa Cultural Center, Dheisheh Refugee
Camp
West Bank, Palestine: The Ibdaa Cultural Center was introduced
to the Martín-Baró Fund by Grassroots
International, the Boston-based partner of the Dheisheh Refugee
Camp. Dheisheh is one of the 59 Palestinian Refugee Camps established
as a result of the creation of the state of Israel and is now home to
11,000 people, 50% of whom are under the age of fifteen. Dheisheh residents
face multiple hardships including squalid living conditions, 70% unemployment,
displacement from the land, and a generation of young people with extremely
limited hope for the future, not to mention continuing political conflict
with Israel and now, on occasion, the Palestinian Authority.
 The
Cultural Center is a thoroughly indigenous project designed to provide
youth with opportunities for education, cultural and historical reconnections,
computer access and literacy, the discovery of more egalitarian gender
relations, and links to youth both in other camps and internationally.
These activities are designed to develop new leadership for the entire
community and a renewed sense among young people that the future can,
with their efforts, be more hopeful than it has been in the past. The
Center, in other words, seeks to reclaim a generation of youth who have
known little but despair, fighting, and the loss of both the past and
the future. The Martín-Baró Fund grant will support the development
of an oral history project designed to reconnect participants with the
authentic histories of their families and community as an essential
condition for positive mental health and the confidence to work for
a just future. Some additional information on Ibdaa is available at
the GRI
website.
Indradevi Association
Phnom Penh, Cambodia: The Indradevi Association is a grassroots
organization that provides community education about STDs and HIV and
has clinics in slum areas of Phnom Penh, and in nearby rural provinces,
that provide care to people with STDs, HIV and AIDS, especially prostitutes
and the very poor. Providing assistance to people with AIDS and their
families is another service the organization offers. Through their community
education and clinic work with prostitutes and the poor, the Indradevi
Association staff have come to be known and respected as resources in
the areas in which they work. Their involvement in the community has
increased their awareness of the need to provide mental health services
to these populations as well, given the high incidence of personal and
community trauma that the people they work with have experienced.
A grant
from the Martín-Baró Fund will provide money to open a counseling room
where people can come to discuss emotional difficulties in individual
and group settings with trained volunteers and staff. Moreover, funding
will support the training of fifteen volunteers who will then lead workshops
in the community that will focus on developing problem-solving skills,
finding ways to resolve conflict and communicate effectively, and learning
how to manage stress.
Instituto Accion Para
El Progreso Huancavelica, Peru
Sociopolitical turmoil and violence largely affected the rural towns
within the Andes of Peru during the 1980s. Entire pueblos were destroyed
as they were caught in the political battles between a revolutionary
leftist group known as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the state's
military forces. Many had to abandon their homes, men disappeared, and
women, children and the elderly were often left in the villages alone.
Currently, in this post-war era, these communities are struggling to
rebuild themselves and their cultural identity, and are battling the
repercussions of the war, including poverty, psychosocial trauma, and
fragmented families and communities.
The
project funded by the Martín-Baró Fund focuses mainly on the psychosocial
development of women, children, families, and the community as a whole.
There are two components to the project. The first aims to create three
agricultural fields that would produce various foods, such as tomatoes,
carrots, onions, etc. Members of the community will be taught how to
work the land, and will supplement their diets with the produce, particularly
for the malnourished children. The community and families will also
be able to profit directly from the production as well. The second part
of the project focuses on psychological and cultural healing, and will
involve conducting "platicas" or talks, with the goal to build self
esteem, promote resilience, learn about human rights, and teach children
their cultural identity through the creation of traditional costumes
and artwork in workshops.
Millenium Outreach S. H. Group
Homa Bay, Kenya: The Millennium Outreach S.H. Group is a non-political,
non-religious and multi-ethnic organization of thirty-two people of
varying backgrounds, established in 1998 to work with the warring ethnic
communities of the Luo and Kissi tribal people on conflict resolution
between the two groups of people. These two groups have been pitted
against each other by politicians of different political camps, and
the resulting violence and chaos have caused death, injury, disruption
of families and communities, as well as poverty and economic and cultural
havoc.
The
group proposes to educate the Kisii and Luo in the principles of multiparty
democracy and to help them recognize the importance of reconciliation
and human rights by: (a) conducting ten workshops along the 100 km.
stretch of contested border, which will bring together leaders from
both communities to share sentiments and misconceptions about each other
and to come up with plans of action to bring about a lasting change
in attitude and behavior that recognizes human dignity; (b) establishing
ten counseling centers along that border, offering counseling and services
to those affected by the ethnic violence; (c) setting up ten action
groups consisting of members from each group to monitor the observation
of resolutions reached at the workshops; and (d) advocating for peace
and tolerance between the two ethnic communities. An estimated 100,000
people will be affected by the project.
Movimiento de Mujeres Lucrecia Lindo
Chinandega, Nicaragua: Nicaragua has been greatly affected by
sociopolitical turmoil for more than half a century. The Somoza family
held Nicaragua under dictatorial rule from 1936-1979. During this period,
a small Nicaraguan elite along with outside business interests enriched
themselves at the country's expense while deepening social and economic
inequalities. This burden fell heavily on the backs of Nicaraguan women.
With the overthrow of Somoza by the Sandinista popular revolutionary
movement, 25% of whose military forces were comprised of women, a significant
step forward was taken for women. Landmark laws were established that
protected women from physical as well as psychological abuse. However,
the US-supported counter-revolution and subsequent economic embargo
created a war-weary electorate in the 1990s that voted the Sandinistas
out and favored a US-backed UNO coalition that promised to end the war
and trade embargo. However, with the UNO government, Nicaragua has experienced
a resurgence of inequity in the distribution of resources, once again
burdening women disproportionately and diminishing their political power.
The
Movimiento de Mujeres Lucrecia Lindo de Chinandega was established in
1992 in response to this return to right wing conservatism. There are
1800 women members from thirteen municipal areas of Chinandega whose
main objective is to promote the rights of women. The organization aims
to reclaim the rights and protections for women promised by the Sandinista
government. More specifically, their objective is to eliminate family
violence and sexual abuse, and to create a climate supportive of emotional
reconstitution, necessitated by these abuses. With the help of the Martín-Baró
Fund grant, the group plans to train community facilitators in techniques
that facilitate emotional recovery, emphasizing women's and community
perspectives. Those women who receive help from the project will, in
turn, provide services to members of their respective communities, filling
a critical void in mental health services that are sustainable and designed
to help empower whole communities.
Slum Development Society
Chennai, India: The Slum Development Society (SDS) was founded
in 1987 to combat the severe economic, social, psychological and political
problems of the Dalit, or the outcasts of Indian society. The literacy
rate of the project population is 31%, and the average daily wages are
approximately 25-50 cents. In 1994, 256 rapes were reported in SDS's
serviced communities. After a woman is raped her prospects for marriage
in this culture are slim. With few other options these women often commit
suicide. Furthermore, AIDS is fast swallowing up India. Ten thousand
women in Madras alone have AIDS.
The
staff of SDS includes fourteen people, mostly women. They have conducted
a study of 20 villages in the area, examining their problems and proposing
possible solutions. SDS activities include community participation in
meetings, street plays focusing on political education, night-time skills
training and education for children who work during the day, small loans
for women starting businesses, a library for the community, AIDS education,
and summer camps for children.
The
proposed Human Rights Awareness project further addresses the social,
psychological, and economic difficulties of the Dalit by focusing on
adolescents, especially school dropouts. The project will identify approximately
a hundred young people from twenty remote villages of Tamilnadu, one
of the most socially, economically, and culturally marginalized areas
of the region. They will provide job, leadership and skill training
for two days each month for one year, will offer psychological counseling
and guidance addressing problems of inferiority and self-hatred resulting
from the institutionalized racism of the caste system, and will encourage
advocacy of human rights. Follow-up procedures built into the program
will monitor the effectiveness of the intervention and reinforce the
participants' awareness of changing social possibilities and human rights.
Return
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English
to Spanish translations
courtesy
of Melisa Flores
©
2007, Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund for Mental Health & Human Rights
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