Rights Training Transforms Indigenous Communities
When local partner Pastoral Social Diocesana de Benjamín Aceval (Pastoral Social) conducted training and awareness sessions on fundamental rights such as the right to life, health, and education, people in the three focus communities turned out. Many participants said they’d come because they realized how important it is to know their basic rights in order to claim and exercise them.
A number of the women brought their children along, and there was also an increase in men attending. This growing involvement encourages a broader understanding of human rights throughout the population and motivates people to demand enforcement from the relevant authorities. The Pastoral Social Indigenous Team conducting the training sessions remarked upon the active participation of the women. A portion of a poem sent by Pastoral Social explains why they were so pleased to witness this:
A young woman learns to speak of her rights in a language that is not her own.
And in that learning, there is also immense dignity:
that of someone who was never heard before,
but today has not stopped speaking and smiling
…
This is an act of faith.
Because believing in humanity here is already a form of resistance.
And to love, unseen, is the purest form of hope.
These sessions aimed to share essential human rights knowledge to support the holistic development of Indigenous communities in the Lower Chaco. One community is made up of Enxet Sur people, traditional hunter-gatherers who have often been forced to work as laborers on the very cattle ranches that have encroached upon their forest habitat. As development further threatens their way of life, knowledge of their rights and how to advocate for themselves becomes more and more important. Pastoral Social promotes these activities to empower communities through knowledge and active participation, fostering their leadership in their own development.
Paraguay Lower Chaco Program
Led by Church World Service and Local Partner Pastoral Social Diocesana de Benjamín Aceval