Success Stories involving CIDA cooperation on activities undertaken in Colombia by the Debt Conversion facility in 1993-2004 and presently with Foster Parents Canada.

Building the environment for peace

More than 400 families in Colombia's Boyaca Department have put poverty and hunger behind them, thanks to a small CIDA-supported project implemented by a local group, the Associacion Comunitaria Semillas (Seeds Community Association). The whole community got involved: adults, youth and children identified their problems, found solutions, underwent training and got to work.

They diversified their crops, growing lettuce, potatoes, peas, corn, quinoa, mulberries and more. They started raising small animals - chickens, pigs and rabbits - which produced organic fertilizer for their crops. They learned how to farm ecologically and how to manage their forests. Today, their resources are protected, their nutrition has improved significantly and their income is up, thanks to the sale of excess produce.

What happened in Boyaca Department has been repeated in 11 other departments across Colombia, funded by a debt-for-development swap arranged by Canada. In 1993, Canada converted $16.5 million of bilateral debt that Colombia owed into an environmental fund administered by a Colombian umbrella organization called Ecofondo. By 2002, 172 projects had directly benefitted more than 800,000 people and indirectly benefitted another 1.1 million.

Despite an ongoing civil war and, recently, a declining economy, the achievements of these projects have been remarkable: nearly 4,000 hectares of agro-ecological models and 120,000 hectares of conservation models have been established; almost 640,000 trees have been planted, over 19,000 tons of urban solid waste is being managed. These and other activities have generated new knowledge about sustainable development, knowledge that is being shared around the world. Perhaps even more important, 956 local organizations have been strengthened and marginalized communities have been able to claim their ancestral lands as their own.

"One of the reasons this project has been so successful," says Jules Audet, long-time project monitor for CIDA, "is that it's a brilliant example of partnership - between Canadians and Colombians, and between CIDA and Ecofondo. It was based on mutual respect, common objectives, trust and competence. These aren't just words -- they put them into practice.

"Another reason was the excellent work done by the local organizations. They were regionally based; they knew their regions and they knew their people. We could continue working, even in regions affected by civil unrest, violence and displacement, because the organizations were known and trusted by the people as well as some of the warring groups."

If families are able to resist the temptation to grow crops for the drug lords, they can avoid everything that goes with it: loss of cropland and food security; environmental deterioration; migration for work and family breakdown; and the incursion of crime, violence, drug use and prostitution into the community. CIDA is beginning a new $5 million phase of this project, aiming its support directly at families who face these risks. Ecofondo and its local partners will continue to play a key role, negotiating with the warring parties, building trust and confidence among all the players, and enhancing the capacity of the community to manage their resources sustainably and take charge of their own development. They, and the communities they work with, will also build a better future for war-torn Colombia by reducing crime and violence and helping conserve one of the world's most precious reservoirs of biodiversity and genetic resources. As one young student from Boyaca put it, "My wish is for nature to remain free... I wish to be an excellent student, and, tomorrow, a teacher."

Foster Parents - Plan Internacional Colombia

Mobilizing for peace: young people making a difference in Colombia

For over 50 years, the children of Colombia have grown up knowing nothing but war. More than 2 million have been affected since 1985, traumatized by constant violence, robbed of their education and their youth, facing a future without choices. More and more young people are being drawn into the nightmare themselves, recruited by criminal gangs or armed groups. But the young people of Colombia are determined to change all that. Thanks to the CIDA-supported Conflict Resolution for Adolescents program run by Foster Parents Plan Canada, more than 3,000 students and youth are being trained to build peace in their communities.

It's an uphill battle. Violence is a way of life in war-torn Colombia, not just on the shifting battle lines of the civil war and the drug trade, but in the family, on the street, and in the schools and other institutions. "There's a lot of fighting, a lot of conflict," says Natalia, a young peace builder with the project. "A student just looks at another student, and that's the basis for a conflict. ..the greatest problem in my community is the lack of dialogue. Without dialogue, how can we expect to solve our problems? Most people go directly to arms."

Foster Parents Plan's Colombia Country Office is implementing the project in partnership with the I nternational Centre for Education and Human Development (CINDE) and local stakeholders. The approach is preventive: young people are given the skills that will help them to avoid becoming involved in violence and at the same time actively promote peaceful conflict resolution. Thirty-one schools and five youth organizations are participating, and each has a multiplier team of five youth, two teachers and two parents.

Located in or near the areas of most intense conflict, this project's goal is to improve peacebuilding capacity while addressing some of the key causes and intensifiers of violence among adolescents. That includes changing some deeply-ingrained attitudes and perceptions. CINDE begins with the individual, generating a healthy, non-violent self-concept, fostering respect for diversity, honing communications skills, including learning how to express emotions and trust others, and teaching leadership and specific conflict resolution techniques.

At the project's first national forum, a unified peace-building proposal was developed by Natalia and other young peacebuilding promoters. It focuses on communication skills, values like justice, respect and equity, citizen participation and creative methods of conflict resolution. Action plans have been developed by the participating institutions. Among the activities now under way are workshops for youth and parents, festivals, creation of reconciliation venues in schools, a Peace Olympics, video clubs to increase awareness on human rights and child rights, and conferences on the Colombian Constitution and government institutions.

At the end of the three-year project, there will be 36 youth groups and a new 3,000-strong army of peacebuilders. They will consolidate into peacebuilding organizations and connect with peacebuilding networks. Patricia Sanchez, the Coordinator of the Project, says that once the original group of promoters graduates from high school, the project can still continue: "...other young people are left behind to multiply the message and multiply the training," she says. "In this way, the project is self-sustaining."

Although still in its infancy, this project is already having an impact. UNESCO has chosen it as an example of best practice in education, which will be celebrated at the 47th International Conference on Education in Geneva next September. Perhaps the best measure of its impact is the change it has made within its young participants. "For me, this process has been extraordinarily cool," says Miris. "I've had the opportunity to share a lot of things with people I didn't even know before. It's been an enormous feedback for my spirit and it brings out everything that I can give of myself to benefit the whole community."