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Emergency
Tsunami Relief:
 Slum
Development Society, Tamil Nadu, India.
The December, 2004, tsunami that hit the Indian coast affected thousands
of fishing people whose only source of livelihood was the sea. The
Slum Development Society, a former grantee of the
Martín- Baró
Fund, took crucial leadership in efforts to distribute aid to the
people of Chennai. As reported by SDS President D. Benjamin, the
organization "helped victims to find alternative sites for
living and working, gathered the youth of the affected areas and
made them guardians of the aid materials provided to the people,
cleaned the coastline and the area around the Srinivasapuram slum
dwellings, distributed food packets, and cooked three days worth
of food for the people of Srinivasapuram." The Fund's Special
Grant to SDS helped to make possible the purchase of tents, school
uniforms and other clothing and supplies, and the services of a
mobile relief van to take victims to the hospital.The Slum Development
Society was previously funded by MBF in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2003.
A full report from SDS President Benjamin is in our Spring, 2005,
Newsletter. |
2005
Grants
 Asociación
Centro de Educación y Formación Maya Ixil, San Gaspar
de Chajul, Guatemala. The Martín-Baró Fund renewed its grant to
the Center for Mayan Ixil Education and Development, which works with
youth and women in the rural town of Chajul and its surrounding villages,
an area profoundly affected by more than thirty-six years of civil war
and entrenched poverty. Over the past year, despite some resistance
by husbands and fathers in the communities, 150 women and youth participated
in monthly mental health workshops, sharing their experiences during
the war, working through their fears, and developing support networks.
Gaspar Ijom, workshop facilitator, reports that participants have begun
to incorporate concepts of human rights into their world view, and have
experienced "a new self-understanding." The renewed grant
will allow ACEFOMI to extend their work to four other villages, as well
as to expand its activities in the town of Chajul.
 Boarding
School Healing Project,
South Dakota, USA. During the 19th and well into the 20th century,
Native American children were forcibly abducted from their homes to
attend boarding schools, where they were systematically humiliated,
abused, and stripped of their language, cultural traditions, and family
connections. The devastating impact of these experiences continues to
affect tribal life today. The Fund renewed its grant to the Boarding
School Healing Project, which seeks to document and raise consciousness
about these abuses so that Native communities can begin a process of
healing. The Project plans to expand its work to all South Dakota Reservations
in the coming year, as well as developing video documentation. Other
goals for next year include completing the documentation process on
all reservations, holding annual meetings for survivors of boarding
schools, introducing legislation on boarding school abuses in the U.S.
Congress, and beginning the organization of a national conference.
 Burmese
Refugee Project, Thailand. The Burmese Refugee project
has been working in northwestern Thailand with ethnically Shan refugees
from Myanmar (formerly Burma), helping them to gain access to education,
health care, and legal services. These services are essential to the
refugees' quality of life and human rights, and are otherwise denied
to them by the Burmese and Thai governments. The Fund's grant provides
stipends for two full-time local social workers who provide cultural,
recreational, and educational activities for the children and serve
as advocates for refugee families. Grant money also provided for emergency
health care and mandatory school uniforms and books, so that the children
could attend school with their peers. The BRP encourages the educational
aspirations of the children through an oral history project in which
they interview their parents and grandparents and learn of their history
and culture in Burma. Over the next year they hope to continue this
work, and focus on leadership development and capacity-building to increase
the sustainability of the project. This project is profiled in the
Spring,
2004, issue of our newsletter.
 Centro
Bartolomé de las Casas, San Salvador, El Salvador. This
project works with local communities on economic, social, psychosocial
and spiritual development. During the past year its staff and volunteers
initiated psychosocial work with women survivors of massacres and families
of victims in the Salvadoran community of Arcatao, Chalatenango.. They
trained fifteen women and three men as community mental health facilitators,
to work with an organization of survivors systematically addressing
social trauma through such activities as the creation of a book of survivors'
memories, a 'journey' of memories, a collective mural and community
museum, and exhumations of victims. This psychosocial work is part of
a wider community process through which survivors will work to vindicate
the past and seek justice towards the future. With this year's grant
from the Martín-Baró
Fund, the Center will continue psychosocial accompaniment and facilitation
of public sharing of experiences of survivors of exhumation processes.
They will also initiate healing workshops for survivors in the northern
zone of Morazan.
 Center
for Immigrant Families, New York City, NY, USA. The
Center for Immigrant Families' organizing model focuses on the needs
of low income immigrant women of color, using a popular education model
which emphasizes the centrality and importance of people's own knowledge,
experiences, histories and cultures. The women they serve have lost
homes, and have experienced being uprooted, abused and exploited. "As
we share our migration stories," report the Center's members, "we
come to understand the different issues and challenges affecting us
structurally, rather than in terms of personal failings." The Center
will conduct three cycles of community-based workshops on Culture,
Migration, and Community Organizing (each consisting of 10-12 sessions
over a period of three months) for two low-income immigrant neighborhoods
in uptown Manhattan: Washington Heights and Manhattan Valley.
Children's
Rehabilitation Center, Quezon City, Philippines.
Philippine children and families have been the victims of decades of
conflict, poverty, and economic displacement, and most recently of massive
human rights violations connected with the Arroyo administration's US-backed
war on 'terrorism.' This year's project by the CRC, a past grantee of
the Fund, will extend psychosocial services in the areas of Eastern
Visayas, Southern Tagalog, and Northern Luzon, and provide psychosocial,
medical, nutritional, and educational assistance to twenty-one child
political prisoners. Programs for children emphasize play therapy, arts
and cultural performance. The CRC also offers counseling for adults,
and encourages them to find alternative solutions in challenging government
policies of terror in their communities. In addition, the CRC will train
45 frontline human rights workers regarding the psychosocial needs of
children and their responses to state violence. Finally, the CRC is
planning an October Children's month, and a December Human Rights Day
with child participants.
 Rwandan
Women's Peace Leadership Project,
Rwanda. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda shattered the country's political
infrastructure and economy, devastating a country already weakened by
the structural adjustment policies of the International Money Fund and
the World Bank. Rwandan women suffered some of the most profound physical
and psychological effects of the conflict. In collaboration with Pro-Femmes,
an umbrella group of 40 Rwandan organizations, the Karuna Center
for Peacebuilding, a non-profit organization based in Amherst, Massachusetts,
will implement Phase II of a project to train staff members to become
trainers in conflict resolution and reconciliation. Seminars will include
the use of inter-communal dialogue and other techniques for rebuilding
communal relations and promoting social healing. This work seeks to
promote the healing and recovery of Rwandan women from the trauma of
loss and rape, through cooperative projects that promote social healing.
Other goals are to promote the development of a culture of peace in
Rwandan social, political, and economic life; increase the capacity
of Rwandan women's organizations to help rebuild interethnic relations
at the grassroots level; and to train Rwandan women's organizations
to incorporate conflict resolution skills in all aspects of their work.
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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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