Children’s voices from Colombia

Children and their families, when empowered through the methodologies within the framework of the JF-CPiE project, become agents of change in their communities and environment. These are children who were at risk of recruitment, trafficking in children and adolescents and other scourges inherent in a country like Colombia where peace is negotiated in conditions of armed conflict.

Three children show here the impact of the project in changing their lives.

Yaisa

What problems were there before you entered the JF-NNA project?

We had arrived displaced from Buenaventura to Cali after having passed through many places where we had a bad time. We endured hunger, my two children were sick, so was I. I was not studying, as a displaced indigenous community in the city, we were in a bad way.

What has changed as a young woman and teenage mother through the project? What have you accomplished as a young woman?

As an indigenous Wounaan Char woman who has 2 children, one of 2 years and the other of just one year, I have learned to work the crafts to get ahead with them, I have learned about my rights and also about their rights as children, I am studying to finish high school because I want to write well in Spanish, but also in Wounaan my original language because I want to be a woman leader who accompanies other women of my community to strengthen their rights.

What is your most important proposition for your future and that of your community?

My purpose is to continue studying to learn to write well in Spanish and in Wounaan to become a leader who helps my community here in the city and that our customs do not disappear as an ancestral people. Also as when we moved I brought a book from my community written in the Wounaan language, teach girls and boys the language so that they do not lose it. I am currently learning to write stories and stories to narrate what happened to my community when we moved.

Understanding my rights and empowering myself to serve my community is the most important thing, I will continue to do so and for that I know that I have to continue learning and training.

John

Tell us about how you entered the project?

My mom died and, from there, things did not go well until now that things have improved due to this project.

In my case there were many and as we were displaced here in Cali, here it is not like in the Wounaan community where we had enough food to eat. We were able to get bush meat, fish, or rubber taps and ate if we had no food. but here you cannot do that. I was hungry and that’s why I didn’t even go to school. And that’s why I also started consuming marimba (Marijuana). 

I didn’t want to consume, but the truth is that one feels very lonely here. The food here is very scarce. I need papachina (Taro, an edible corm) to eat and around here there is not,. Here, you have to buy it and they almost do not sell it. 

What has changed with the project?

The project helped my dad and my grandmother to support me. It has also helped me to stop consuming. They understand that we are indigenous and that the support for us is not the same as for the others here and that is good.

They help us get ahead with this addiction They continue to teach us our rights and the risks that exist if we consume. They teach me how important the study is, but above all they always treat us with great respect and it is nice how they say things to me so I can learn.

The hardest experience, the one that taught me that I should not consume more, was when we went to see how people who have been consuming all those hard drugs live. That’s ugly, that’s scary. It made me want to throw up and that’s why we didn’t put more of that because that’s very bad.

Now we take care of ourselves and we do not want to go back to drugs because that hurts our community and the children of the community and because I don’t want my brothers to do that. I take care of myself and a I went back to school to study again.

What is your wish for your future?

I want to help my family and my community if I can. I want to sing in the Wounaan language and also in Spanish, but I know that I have to study so I am doing it because the help is always there and it serves me and my community.

Jackson

What was your situation before you entered the project?

Being bored and not knowing what to do because there were no opportunities, I started using drugs. There were problems in my family that I couldn’t fix. They helped my grandparents, my mom and me and everyone in the community, now we are better. When I began to understand my rights as a teenager, when I learned about the importance of being healthy, taking care of myself and studying, I knew that would only bring me problems later on.

I went back to school because I had stopped going. I have improved a lot with the disease and the community also because the danger was that with the bad example, other children in the community would do the same.

What has changed for you?

Fixing the relationship with my grandmother who had been damaged is important, I went and asked for forgiveness because I had behaved badly, also with the grandfather who is the oldest in the community.

The project still help us because this is little by little. Getting into the drug problem is easy, but getting out of there is difficult. Help is needed and they are supporting me and the children who need it. It is a way of respecting them and respecting our customs.

Before I kept my hands dirty, I did not bath or eat and I left school. I took 5,000 pesos (1 euro) from my grandmother, so now that I am healing I asked my grandmother for forgiveness. The marimba (Marijuana) does a lot of damage and I don’t want to continue setting a bad example with that.

What is your wish for your future?

I want to become a community elder like my grandfather, learn all the things he knows, teach them to the children of my community and help people like my grandfather. I want to cure them with plants the way he and my grandmother tought me. Here in the city, you need it a lot of that because there are many people who are sick. 

With my friends now we do other things like playing ancestral games like when we lived in the community and we are learning other languages taking advantage of the fact that we can speak several languages.

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