Migrating in search of rights: the history of Carmen and her community in La Guajira

“Most of us who live here are migrants. Being here was too hard for us because we didn’t know where to start,” Carmen describes what it has been like for her and countless other families who had to migrate from Venezuela due to the complex economic and social situation in their country.

Carmen is a 42-year-old wife and mother of six children who lives in the La Transformación neighborhood in Uribia, La Guajira, one of the migrant settlements in that region of Colombia. Migrating for Carmen, and for hundreds of Venezuelan families, means listening to and facing the daily narrative “you have no rights”.

Carmen assures that she lived through this situation and somehow believed that it was normal, until SOS COL arrived through the project JF-CPiE in emergencies, to her life, her family and her community.

“Practically here we were told as migrants – you do not have the right to health care, you do not have any ID – and the project came to open our eyes because many of us did not know that we have access to health care, like everyone else, we knew that there were human rights, but we did not know them in detail. And here they showed us, guided us and have done so many things, both in the community environment, as well as in the children and in us. It has been a beautiful change to hear and internalize that yes, we are all equal, they have taught us so many things that I practically say that the lack of knowledge of these things made us live in darkness because we did not know what our rights were, nor the rights of our children”.

We, the caregivers, became children again.

The project, says Carmen, “has made many changes in our lives, especially in children and families, because there was no communication, there was no union as a community. And due to the project and everything we have been taught, what values and rights there are.”

And she continues: “That excitement of waiting for the seño’ (facilitators of SOS COL), both parents and children, as if we were children too, why? Because what they teach us is not a boring talk, no, it is something that motivates us, it is something that teaches, it is an emotion for us, practically we are other children who want to learn, and we have already learned a lot and that for us is of great value. The importance that the project has had for us is immense because the knowledge that we have acquired we had not acquired even by studying. Being a member of the project is spectacular. I feel very proud, very happy to have participated as a community member, as a mommy, how beautiful! It was an unforgettable experience for me, as I say it for my children, I found this project so
beautiful”.

For the protection of the children of our community

The project implemented actions with children, adolescents, families, community leaders and the community in general, with the aim of strengthening them in the protection of children and adolescents. For two years the CFS were the main meeting place and union, about this Carmen says: “It has changed the way we live, how we treat each other and how to take care of our children, because we thought that taking care of our children was giving them food, keeping them locked up so that nothing happens to them, the project has given us the tools to raise our
children well”.

She was so interested in the project that she joined the Community Child Protection Committee- where she says: “they have taught us many things that we should do, why we should do it, and sometimes we thought that taking care of our children was a very different way of prohibiting them from going out, no! it is preparing them to go out, to study, to have values, to learn right from wrong, and not to make everything a taboo. They showed us that we should talk to our children, how to talk to them and how we as a community can protect our children”.