AVANZA ~ COLOMBIAAVANZA COLOMBIA Education . Pedagogiarnis Reconciliacion ‘congress, Quantu I and II represented for more than two years the concerted effort to raise the country’s awareness regarding the finding of a different solution to the social and armed conflict. This conflict has caused more than 8 million victims and it has also weakened Colombia for more than 60 years. Today we are aware of the fact that we need to follow a path that does not lead us to an armed confrontation. We are tal- king about comprehensive peace, where everybody participates in the negotia- ting table, including politicians, armed groups, the government, the civil society Culture and Artsand the international community. We have one single wish, a wish that will make us tum over a new leaf and build an unknow reality where no ideas, pro- posals or projects need to be backed up by weapons, where the budget trans- forms into books, medicines, food and opportunities to the countryside and the city, a reality in which we will finally un- derstand the true meaning of the word peace and a reality in which AVANZA COLOMBIA. Our project is based on these considera- tions and on the actions that have been carried out for more than ten years to say no to war and yes to peace. The pro- ject’s name is AVANZA COLOMBIA and it represents the step taken to encourage dialogue between the negotiating tables and the different lands of the country, to encourage the adoption of direct strate- gies to avoid the repetition of the conflict and to build peace in our country throu: ghout the strengthening of three main areas: 1. Education: public building of knowle- dge and training networks to promote social harmony and to stop discrimina- tions. 2, Communication: information and opi- nion networks that provide accredited and certified tools linked to a strategic proposal that will encourage the establi- shment of an inclusive mass media law. 3. Culture and arts: establishment of ne- tworks that raise awareness regarding our country’s heritage and resilience, through the implementation of group proposals and artistic studies.EDUCATION: parala Reconciliacion Education for the reconciliation of the country: Colombia is a country that has been in war for more than 60 years. This war has caused more than 8 million victims, massive migration, three hundred thou- sand Colombians that are either dead or missing, the militarization of everyday language, social areas, economy, art and politics. Therefore, in our country peo- ple need to learn about peace and social harmony, and that the war, the mistreat- ment of ideas, the abuse of people and the destruction of the environment is wrong. Given this scenario, we develo- ped a system of education which encou- rages reconciliation called Convites para el Posconflicto. This project started with small conferences and workshops de- signed and focused on leaders living in war-affected areas and it continued its development centered in the following topics: Peace Seeds: addressed to boys and girls in elementary school.Imagining Peace: addressed to teena- gers and young people, class presidents and other members of student's organi- zations. Convites YOUR PEACE: addressed to students and social interest groups in the municipalities and regions. Peace Forums: organized to promote encounters with the communities to in- form them about the agreements esta- blished in the negotiating tables where the members of the community have a direct link to the members of the nego- tiating table. National and International Conferen- ces: academic and research gatherings with the participation of experts who put forward proposals to obtain peace and to develop the country, Studies: academic and research studies developed in different areas of the coun- try by its inhabitants to take into account their conclusions and recommendations focused on creating guarantees to avoid the repetition of the armed conflict and to solve the conflict which involves the countryside and the city, AVANZA COLOMBIA in terms of educa- tion for the reconciliation of the country has very clear goals, a creative and inclu- sive methodology that is based on expe- riential leaning and which involves ac- tive members who seek transformations in all the areas near and far the centers of power of the country. This part of the project will be developed as follows -Peace Forums: 36 regional and commu- nity meetings with direct participation of the negotiators of FARC, ELN or the government through video chat, where there won't be specialists involved, only the direct voice of the communities. In this way, we will prevent external inter- pretations of the opinions of the commu- nities and we will answer specific ques- tions regarding the interest groups and their lands. Convites Your Peace: 30 regional en- counters of organizations which seek to discuss how to communicate to obtain peace, life plans, social initiatives and democratic participation. @-Peace Seeds: 60 training workshops in which we will read stories to boys and girls, so their dreams never involve the use of weapons. -Imagining Peace: 2 regional encounters and one national encounter of class pre- sidents and members of student organi- zations -Peace Immense Camp “Todos Pa’ La Mesa”: In the municipality of Mesa Cun- dinamarca, different social movements will gather in an academic, cultural and political meeting to share with the peo- ple and the social groups that want peace in the country, regardless of their belie- fs, ideologies, and thoughts. We hope to symbolically build the biggest table of the world.COMUNICATION: Federacion Internacional de Prensa de los Pueblos Comunica Federacién Internacional de Prensa de los Pueblos (FIPU) / International Fede- ration of People's Press (FIPU in Spani- sh) ‘After reading the results, conclusions and recommendations of two studies ca- rried out by our foundation, through the Quantu project and with the support of Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia in 22 municipalities of our country, visiting 8 departments affected by the armed and social conflict, we found a common trait among them and that was the invisibili- ty of these regions, its inhabitants and n para la paz their needs. During the development of the conflict its causes and effects have been some- how forgotten and nowadays people don’t know if there is a war because the- re is abandonment and persecution of the forces that do not allow changes to happen in the country, or if there is aban- donment because the war makes the en- tering of the Estate impossible with an offer different from the use of military forces. Therefore, there is a gray area that every- day distances itself more from the urban Colombia and its centers of power andits resources, We are talking about the countryside in Colombia, an area which fights against survival and stoicism, be- cause its inhabitants are not represented in the branches of power of the country. Since we want to give a voice to the reali- ty of the remote regions and to the social organizations located in the cities, we are working to bring forward the Internatio- nal Federation of People’s Press (FIPU in Spanish) that we hope will create a glo- bal network to similar social fights in the future. If we guarantee that everyone can speak and belistened to, we will go one step fur- ther in the path to stopping the progress and perpetuation of the conflict. But we still have a long way to go before these instruments of social communication become an effective reality. To achieve this, we need certain objective elements such as training, certifications, accre- ditations, tools and to follow the appro- priate steps to carry out this project. We also need resources that will flow from = subjective elements such as creativity, passion, immediateness, presence, expe- riences, unity in the midst of plurality, and organization, In general terms, we can affirm that the communication area seeks to: *Make these remote regions visible to the rest of the country and the world *Give a voice to these communities “Follow the implementation of the agree- ments “Digitally alphabetize former comba- tants “Train, certify, accredit and support with ICT tools popular communication for former combatants and these remote re- gions. The actions Avanza Colombia Project must carry out in order to accomplish these goals related to the communica- tion area are: ‘The launching of the platform of social communication FIPU where the people, organizations, and social groups could develop social communication and inwhich we could offer the training, accre- ditation, certification and the possibility to produce and share informative and formative contents, opinion pieces, chro- nicles, studies or reports. ‘The upholding of the current conven- tion on training and certification that we established with Universidad Nacio- nal de Ja Plata in Argentina in terms of popular communication. With this, we hope to give the members of FIPU a local and global vision of communication and ‘we hope to have a mutual sharing of ex- periences and knowledge thanks to the contents and long distance education. The formulation and implementation of an itinerant room for digital literacy and training of the personnel to obtain pea- ce with former combatants which come from the insurgent groups in the remote regions of the country. -In the medium and long term, FIPU will have a digital center for the donation of technological tools to the communica- tion for peace called: “Donalibre’, that will allow the communication among so- cial groups and people, and to link priva- te and public companies, with elements that support the exercise of the journa- listic works, but with tools that are no longer necessary for them (cameras, au- dio and video recorders, tripods, compu- ters, smartphones, tablets, etc). -In order to promote and improve the results of FIPU, regional encounters and national workshops will be carried out. ‘We will also support international par- ticipations in popular communication for the journalists with a better perfor- mance and ranking in the platform, in which the quality of the production, the relevance of the contents, and its public impact and the reality we hope to build allows the individual and collective growth. The expansion of the National and In- ternational Network of Journalists for the Peace (including everyone that en- ters through the educational area and it will be a very useful center for local and regional political leaders to the consoli- dation of movements with electoral and opinion power). The creation and implementation of a room of audiovisual editing for the pro- duction of our own materials in the head office of the Foundation while FIPU ac- quires its own headquarters, which will improve the quality and impact of the news and that could be used by its mem- bers. -The implementation of a physical room of digital literacy thanks to national and international support for the communi- @QO WW AE cation of the communities in the founda- tion for young people from towns in Me- dellin and the metropolitan areas with an important component of personal training that will allow the building of urban peace and that protects the strate- gic goal of avoiding the repetition of the conflict. ‘The future creation of an Application (App) for smartphones called RADAR- PAZ (Digital Support Network for the Following of the Agreements and the Re- conciliation) linked to the FIPU platform, that will allow the people living in remo- te regions to follow the accomplishment of the signed agreements in the negotia- ting tables through geolocalisation, and WX multimedia contents (videos, photos, documents, audio recordings, etc) and the works of popular journalism in any part of the country and that will allow to follow the actions carried out by the Tripartite Commission (United Nations, National Government- Ministry for the Post Conflict and Former Combatants) regarding the building of national peace and the guarantying of the no repetition of the conflict The creation of unity spaces to draft a law of inclusive press and its approba- tion in the congress which will represent a guarantee of the no repetition of the armed conflict,CULTURE AND ARTS: CBPAZ, Peace to the Parks One of the definitions of the word “cul- ture” indicates that this is a term which refers to a society's knowledge accumu- lated transmitted among generations. That is why to talk about a violent cul- ture, related to death and resignation in a country is a reality enhanced by a conflict that could be considered an ugly ruth In the foundation, when we started our work ina different, creative way, approa- ching the problems in a direct way with the communities and in their own lands, we did not want to keep the deplorable speech about suffering, tears and a dark past. We tried to start a path full of hope through memories. We did not know much about resilience, but we acted ac- cording to it, we did not ignore tragedy, but we believed in progressing despite it. In the year 2008 we had a beautiful ex- perience in the village Fraguas Machuca in Segovia. Ten years before that, on the 18th October, early in the morning, be- cause of a terrible mistake made by the ELN, the biggest tragedy in the history of the Northeast of Antioquia happened: boys, girls, adults and old people burned to death, and hundreds of people saw their houses and family members being destroyed by the fire and, even today, they have the scars of that tragedy as constant reminders of what happened that horrible day. Since we wanted to visit places nobodyor only a few have visited before, we were hired to accompany this community in the 10-year-anniversary of the death of the members of this village. With the su- pport of the Consultancy of Peace of the Government of Antioquia, we started the process of preparation for the anniver- sary ceremony, there were many ideas that involved black clothes, pieces of art representing screams and suffering and big photographs of the area with smoke and destroyed houses; but, in the foun- dation, we wanted to go beyond the pain without forgetting the memories and respecting them, We wanted a ceremony in which people do not only remember the death of their beloved ones, but we also wanted, more than anything else, to celebrate the life of the people that con- tinue to move forward despite their me- mories, We wanted to celebrate hope, we wanted to celebrate the kids that conti- nue to be born as sun shines that soften the pain. Therefore, we created an image in which there was a sunflower on fire in the middle of a beautiful field full of many sunflowers that continue until the horizon and beyond. In the process of rescuing life in the midst of memories full of sufferings we found the story of Candela (Flame), we do not remember her real name, but that is the way everybody called her due to the fact that her mother and her were not affected by the tragedy because that same day Candela was born in a hospi- tal in Segovia. Her mother had to travel to the city to give birth. So, that October 18, 2008, Candela was turning 10 years old and she was a symbol of hope in the midst of a path full of sadness and des- peration. We also met Marfa Cecilia Mosquera, who lost everything a person can lose in a lifetime: the day of the fire, as people like to call it, Marfa Cecilia lost her three children, her husband, a part of her skin, her house, many family members and friends. But, even though the pain has not disappeared, she became the mother of the new generations in the village and until today she works with us to create the new history this village deserves to write. Before the anniversary date, we had many workshops called fighting for our dreams in which young people, and lea- @ders, men and women, participated du- ring several days. When we gathered to walk to the cemetery we were crying, with flowers and hopes. But, afterwards, those tears became laughs in the party in which we took all the streets to cele- brate Candela’s birthday alongside with Maria Cecilia, kids, and other victims. We played and had fun and we all knew that we had to continue moving forward because of all those people who died. The future had to be better and we celebrated always thinking about them, always con- sidering our memories and fighting for a better tomorrow with no more wars, with no more deaths and sorrows. Our cultural and artistic area PEACE TO ‘THE PARK follows this same path of me- mories with hopes, of not forgetting to build new stories that lead to a better fu- ture. We had made this a reality through theater, storytelling, music, and painting as means to learn to live with the pain and transform it into paths and bridges for the building of individual, collective and regional peace. Concerts, theater plays, storytelling, and videos for the raising of awareness and documentaries, and also printed arti- cles have been the tools and activities in which the people have taken parts in the countryside and in the cities to change slowly, but radically, the violent culture for the peaceful culture, enhancing so- cial harmony and processes of reconci- liation, With the project AVANZA COLOMBIA we propose 4 concrete goals with more than 60 actions with a social, regional and na- tional impact based on: -Raising awareness to remember and for the resilience of the communities: ac- tions carried out in order to produce gua- rantees of no repetition of the conflict through the building of digital, symbolic and physical spaces, which involves re- membering and professional training, to create community therapies that allow a different approach to the traumatic si- tuations and the overcoming of the tra- gedies. “Straightening of the artistic organiza-tions and creation of popular art organi- zations: its aim is to support, rescue and present art as a transforming element, that will promote catharsis in commu: nities, that will allow the victims to heal symbolically, that will prevent the lin- king of boys, girls and teenagers with ar- med groups This also seeks to group proposals in po- pular art organizations to straighten the impact in the culture of the regions and to draft a law regarding arts which in- cludes the support, training, credits and subsidies to its development. Theatre, storytelling, concerts, mural paintings, itinerary museums to never forget: courses, contests, encounters, and incentives for artistic proposals linked to to remembering, resilience, peace cultu- re, peaceful civil resistance, democratic participation, and the building of natio- nal peace. Activities: -Six actions with a social impact in 2017 with an impact among departments, related to the artistic area and with to- pics linked to the rebuilding of historic memories and national peace, in order to create changes in cultural paradigms that improve the strategies established to solve conflicts. ‘Twelve actions with a local impact in 2017 which will be carried out in uni- versities, schools, neighborhoods, parks, safeguards, sidewalks, or villages from the artistic perspective and with topics linked to the rebuilding of historic me- mories and national peace. -One action with national impact in 2017: From La Mesa-Cundinamarca mu- nicipality we will send an invitation to all Colombians and to the Colombians living outside the country, to “sit down” in the negotiation tables and take part in the implementation of the agree- ments. “Todos en La Mesa” (Everybody to La Mesa)": a media and educational campaign (with kids and teenagers from educational institutions) that will be linked to the general population and to the foundations that work to build spa- ces to promote peace. From La Mesa, we will spread hope in our country and we @will reaffirm our interest to defend life. This campaign will be the result of the fusion of the four areas of the founda- tion: Seeds for Peace, Convites for Coha- bitation, Campaz, and Peace to the Parks, programs that have been successfully ca- rried out in different parts of Colombia. Center for memories and hopes in Fra- guas-Machuca (Segovia) Antioquia: Those peoples who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Agustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana y Borras. ‘We will build the Center for memories and hopes in Machuca, in which we will gather and recover all the documents, all the oral and any other kind of testimo- nies of the memories of the village, en- hancing the fact that this war zone could overcome the tragedy occurred in 1998.Allies: £2, OPEhO RHOKINONSTIOENTE| MI BEDE CONERAT YOVENA eaeABSTRACT AVANZA COLOMBIA 2017 “Direct link among negotiating tables and lands. “Accompaniment during the implemen- tation of the agreements, *Unique, creative and effective strategies to obtain peace in the countryside and in the cities, which involve the guarantee of no repetition of the conflict. Three areas: 1. Education 2. Communication 3. Culture and arts 1. EDUCATION FOR THE RECONCILIATION OF THE COUNTRY conflict *Unlearning of the and everything it involves. “Topics: life plans, communicating to gain peace, social entrepreneurship, trai- ning for democracy. *Methodology: experiential leaning “Actions: Peace Seeds (boys and girls) 60 works- hops ~ 2hous -Convites Your Peace (Leaders) 36 works- hops ~4 hous -Imagining Peace (Class Presidents and other members of student organizations) 2 regional encounters and one regional encounter. ‘Todos para la Mesa: Peace Immense Camp (organizations and people) 1 en- counter in the municipality of La Mesa, Cundinamarca. -IV International Conference for Peace and Development Proposals (Univer- sity students, experts and leaders) -One event. 2. INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF PEOPLE'S PRESS (FIPU IN SPANISH) To make regions visible to others “To give a voice to the communities To follow the implementation of the agreements To digitally alphabetize former comba- tants To train, certificate, accredit and support with ICT tools in popular communica- tion to former combatants and lands. Strategy: -Launching the popular communication platform FIPU -Convention on training and certifica- tion established with Universidad Nacio- nal de la Plata in Argentina in terms of popular communication.Implementation of an itinerant room for digital literacy to obtain peace with former combatants. - Digital center for the donation of tech- nological tools to the communication for peace called “Donalibre” -Regional encounters and national wor- kshops in popular communication for the journalist with the best performance and ranking in the platform. - National and Intemational Network of Journalists for the Peace (including ever- yone that enters through the educational area and it will be a very useful center for local and regional political leaders to the consolidation of movements with electoral and opinion power). - The creation and implementation of a room of audiovisual editing for the pro- duction of our own materials in the head office of the Foundation. - The implementation of a physical room of digital literacy for the communication of the communities in the foundation for young people from towns in Medellin, -APP that allows to effectively follow the accomplishment of the regional agree- ments and that will an instrument for the parties *The United Nations *Former Combatants Movements *Government (Ministry of Post conflict and other ministries) - Accompaniment during the drafting of a law of inclusive press which will repre- sent a guarantee of the no repetition of the armed conflict. 4,.CULTURE AND ART. PEACE TO THE PARK. “Raising awareness to remember and for the resilience of the communities “Impact activities *Strengthening of the artistic organiza- tions and creation of popular art organi- zations. “Theatre, storytelling, mural paintings, itinerant museums for the memory, etc. Activities: *Six actions with a social impact in 2017 with an impact among departments “Twelve actions with a local impact in 2017 *One action with national impact in 2017 *Center for memories and hopes in Fra- guas-Machuca (Segovia) Antioquia #AvanzaColombia #VamosPorLaPaz #PazCompleta