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NEW PROJECTS FOR 2007
 Proyecto
de Capacitación en Salud Mental Comunitaria y Acompañamiento Psicosocial,
San Cristobal
de las Casas,Chiapas, México. Chiapas is a state mostly
populated by indigenous communities who are extremely marginalized.
 The
conditions of poverty and marginalization led to the formation of the
indigenous political group, EZLN in 1994 and other autonomous, community-based
organizations supported by the Zapatistas. Rather than responding to
the demands of these indigenous groups the Mexican government is waging
low intensity warfare through paramilitary groups. With the grant received
from the Martín-Baró Fund, the Proyecto plans to continue a project
to train indigenous, community-based mental health promoters in community
mental health, psychosocial support and accompaniment, and detecting
and addressing human rights violations. The training workshops focus
on: recognizing low-intensity warfare, engaging in crisis intervention,
gaining tools to facilitate mutual support groups, evaluating the mental
health needs of community members, and addressing alcoholism and domestic
violence. 
RENEWAL
PROJECTS
 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 Chajul and its surrounding rural villages, an area
profoundly affected by more than thirty-six years of civil war and poverty.
This year's grant to ACEFOMI will serve to reinforce the work that the
women have done in the community. They will hold multiple workshops
in each of five identified indigenous communities. The workshops will
address mental health and human rights issues, analyze the problems
that led to the armed conflict and its psychological effects on the
community members, and focus on how to minimize negative risks affecting
youth and women.
 Center
for Immigrant Families, New York City, NY, USA. The
Center for Immigrant Families focuses on the needs of low-income immigrant
women of color, using a popular education model which emphasizes the
importance of people's own knowledge, experiences, histories, and cultures.
In the past year CIF engaged in significant outreach to women in the
Lower Manhattan Valley and continued to work towards CIF's mission of
promoting psychological well-being, health, development, and organizing
for justice among low-income immigrant women of color. With this year's
grant, CIF will continue to further leadership development and organizing
among low-income immigrant women of color. In addition, CIF will continue
to maintain strong relationships with community institutions, particularly
schools and Head Start centers, through a two-part workshop series that
will use exercises, poetry, discussions, and "Theater of the Oppressed"
to engage participants in a reflection process about the issues and
needs in the community that CIF serves. With the Fund's support, several
of the women of CIF visited Boston to present Women Warriors:
Our Stories, Our Lives as Immigrant Women, an exhibit of photography
and stories. More...
 Centro
Bartolomé de las Casas, San
Salvador, El Salvador. The Martín-Baró Fund also renewed
its grant to Centro Bartolomé de las Casas, which works with
local communities on economic, social, psychosocial, and spiritual development.
Centro Bartolomé de las Casas reports that they have achieved their
primary objective for 2006, which was to accompany the communities in
the northeast region in exhumation processes, open the Museo de la Memoria
(Museum of the Memory), and create a book to document survivors' memories.
Both the inauguration of the museum and the launching of the book took
place on May 27, 2007. With this year's grant from the Martín-Baró Fund,
the Center hopes to continue working with a local group of survivors
in the northeast region and to provide psychosocial support to relatives
and survivors of the exhumations. In addition, the Center hopes to further
develop the museum by gathering objects of war, documents, and other
evidence.
Children's
Rehabilitation Center, Quezon City, Philippines.
The human rights situation in the Philippines is getting worse as economic
conditions worsen. From 2001 to May 2006, the CRC documented 215,233
child victims of human rights violations. Out of this number, 54 children
and 4 unborn babies were killed, 106 witnessed the killings of their
parents, 17 were politically detained and tortured, 3 were raped by
the military, and almost 200,000 fled from their communities and were
forcibly displaced by the military operations in their communities.
In the past year, the CRC continued to provide community-based psychosocial
services for displaced families relocated in Montalban, Rizal. This
year's grant will allow the CRC to continue service delivery for the
displaced families as well as for child political prisoners. In addition,
the Center will continue its arts workshops for children.
 Komisyon
Fanm Viktim pou Viktim, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Haitians
living in Port-au-Prince have experienced unprecedented violence and
have been victim to massive violations of their rights. Women participating
in the Commission of Women Victims for Victims' program have experienced
the trauma of rape and many have also had husbands, partners, children
or other family members brutally killed. With the grant offered by the
Martín-Baró Fund, KOFAVIV offered psychosocial support activities to
these women victims of violence. KOFAVIV has also provided training
to community-based human rights workers. In the summer of 2007, KOFAVIV
will also hold community Open Space sessions on the mental health impact
of human rights violations on poor communities. These Open Space activities
will focus on the impact of violence in individual communities and will
serve as a space for the women to begin to reach beyond their peer groups
and talk with others about how violence has affected women in particular.
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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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