Youth for the Amazon: Workshop on creative activism in Caquetá, Colombia

On the 21st of September in Florencia (Caquetá), forty young environmentalists from the Colombian Amazon will be getting together to participate in the first event of the Days of Hope initiative to be held in Latin America. This international initiative seeks to promote the establishment of workshops, in which problems requiring the urgent attention of governments and societies around the world are made visible, discussed and managed, through activities that integrate tools of creative activism.

Days of Hope aims to speak out against issues relating to threats to freedom of expression, social and economic marginalization, forced displacement and migration, gender inequality and racism, hate speech and environmental conflicts.

In this way, and in light of the urgent need to create effective courses of actions to protect the life of the Amazon rainforests, four Colombian organizations: Dejusticia, PID Amazonía, Red Cross and Tell, are getting together to bring to Colombia, or more specifically, to Caquetá, the first event of the Days of Hope initiative to take place in Latin America.

Together with forty young environmentalists from different regions of the department, we will hold a workshop that includes: sparking a conversation about the latest Supreme Court decisions on the protection of the Amazon (Sentencia STC4360-2018) and the declaration of the rainforest as a subject of rights; sharing resources and experiences for the joint construction of the Intergenerational Pact for the Life of the Colombian Amazon (PIVAC); in addition to an invitation from the Atempo collective foundation, for young people to use artistic expressions, such as painting, to make their role in the protection of the Colombian rainforest more visible.

The event will be framed under the slogan: “A day of hope in Caquetá: Youth for the defense of the Amazon“ and will take place at the headquarters of the University of the Amazon (Florencia) [VMJ1] on September 21, between 8:00 am and 4:00 pm.

Days of Hope is an initiative of the international network Landscapes of Hope, which 20 civil society organizations of the world, including Dejusticia, are part of. The network, which was established in 2018 in Beirut, seeks to promote joint actions that raise the visibility of local problems to an international level through the use of creative and artistic elements.

The members of Landscapes of Hope are primarily civil society organizations working in sectors such as human rights, arts and culture, development, urban planning, cultural heritage and gender equality.

In May 2019, Landscapes of Hope announced that it would support three Days of Hope workshops in Colombia, Egypt and Tunisia. In Colombia, they chose the proposal “Youth for the defense of the Amazon“, which was presented by Dejusticia, with the support of PID Amazonía, the Red Cross Bogotá and Tell.

In Egypt, the Megawra organization will hold a day of advocacy and empowerment of women in Cairo’s Al-Hattaba neighborhood, who will join textile artists to weave a traditional community mosaic that will tell the stories of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, in Tunisia, the Fanni Raghman Anni organization will hold an event focused on the painting of murals by young people from marginalized areas, who want to change the negative perception that exists about their territory.