MADRE Programs in Colombia

MADRE and Taller de Vida

MADRE began working with Taller de Vida, an organization that provides critical services for displaced Afro-Colombian and Indigenous women and youth, in 2001. Since then, MADRE has supported:

• Reinventing Life through Art, an art education program for Indigenous and Afro-Colombian youth living in poor communities on the outskirts of Bogota.
• Books for a Brighter Tomorrow, a library, tutoring center and play corner that promotes children's literacy while enabling mothers to participate in Taller de Vida's programs.
• A youth video project, "Esta guerra no es nuestra y la estamos perdiendo" (This War is Not Ours and We are Losing It), in which young people document their experiences of war and displacement.

"The paramilitaries kidnapped me and made me fight. I thought I would never escape. Now I have a new life and new friends at Taller de Vida."
- Tania, a former child soldier

MADRE and LIMPAL

In early 2002, after the collapse of peace talks in Colombia, MADRE began working with LIMPAL, an organization that helps Colombian women overcome the devastating effects of displacement. MADRE supports LIMPAL's work with Trainings for Change, which provides leadership training to strengthen local women's organizations in provinces throughout Colombia and increase women's participation in Colombia's national political process. MADRE also funded LIMPAL's national meeting of displaced women, which supported the creation of a range of programs to meet immediate needs of displaced women heads of households, such as health care, housing and protection from armed violence and street crime.

Currently, MADRE is supporting LIMPAL's Drumbeats of Peace campaign to promote peaceful resistance and demand access to justice, including compensation for women who have been affected by displacement. This national project includes the presentation of declarations to the national legislature, local authorities and women's organizations.