132 leaders from 68 action boards in Colombia accepted TGI's invitation to train in community management.
132 leaders from 68 action boards in Colombia accepted TGI's invitation to train in community management.
What these three women have in common is the maturity to accept and assume the risk of learning, and they are convinced that they are on the right path to continue empowering themselves and, thus, contribute to the development of their territories and the strengthening of the social fabric.
All three accepted TGI's invitation to train as leaders of the JACs in which they participate, within the framework of the Community Management Capacity Building Program for Leaders of Community Action Boards, carried out by the Colombian Caribbean Observatory.
In 2020, 132 leaders from 68 action boards in Colombia accepted TGI's invitation to train in community management. Three women who stood out for their commitment and perseverance will explain here the challenge they faced and what it meant for them.
At 64, on Sunday, February 7, 2021, Candelaria attended the most important appointment she has had in recent times as a member of the Community Action Board of the Pantanillo village in the municipality of Santa Sofía, Boyacá.
She left her house at 4:00 p.m. She walked for 20 minutes to get to the road where she could get on a minivan that would leave her in Santa Sofia after 15 minutes. The appointment with the seven councilors would be at 5:00 p.m. She was heard, and they were surprised by the presentation of her Development Plan.
The Council secretary helped her read point by point and she was in charge of presenting and arguing why and for what. The meeting ended at around 7:00 p.m., she says, and one of the councilors offered to take her back home, because public service transportation would no longer be available at that time.
“I have been chairwoman of the board from 2004 to 2008, as well as from 2016 ‘til now. In 2020, due to the pandemic, we could not meet; and this 2021 we have already met twice,” says Candelaria.
Her Development Plan from 2021 to 2030 is the result of more than 60 hours of training that she received thanks to the program offered by TGI. “We want Santa Sofía to continue to have tourism and for that we need good infrastructure and good roads. And we also include the issue of youth entrepreneurship, because young people do not have support in the countryside,” says Segura.
“In the program they gave me a tablet and I learned how to use it. I am very grateful because in the leaders’ program, I learned many things. Although the internet in the town is not very good, the teachers were very patient and we managed to materialize our Development Pla ”, concludes the leader.
In the south of the department of Bolívar is the village of Sinzona Baja, a town for which there is no information on the internet, but which is part of the municipality of San Pablo. The distance between the two places is 45 minutes by the Magdalena River.
A well-known leader of the region is Temilda Avendaño, a 57-year-old woman who since 2016 has held the presidency of the Community Action Board, which includes 56 members. For her commitment, dedication, and perseverance, she stood out in the Community Management Capacity Building Program for Leaders of Community Action Boards, which ended in December 2020.
“We presented to the professors of the Caribbean Observatory a Development Plan, considering all our needs; for example, we seek to obtain all public utilities, such as electrification, natural gas, and aqueduct, since the water we consume does not meet optimal guidelines. Specifically, for Sinzona Baja I would like the municipal administration of San Pablo to help us with a landfill and drainage area, because when the rainy season arrives, it floods so much that we have lost complete corn, rice, cassava, and subsistence crops. And now with the knowledge acquired in the training, we already know how to present this request to the Mayor's Office,” says Temilda.
In addition to the leadership training process, this agent of change is very grateful for the accompaniment that TGI provides to her community, especially with the humanitarian gesture it had at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic: delivering grocery kits to the most vulnerable families in the village.
Since 2016, Carmen is the president of the Community Action Board of Centro Poblado Garavito, in the village of La Lajita, municipality of Saboyá. "It is a hamlet located on the Chiquinquirá-Barbosa road, which has three blocks on both sides of the road, in the middle of two mountains, so there is no room to grow," says this leader.
Thanks to the training she received from the TGI program, Carmen assures that she now has more to contribute to her community. “They were conferences in which we shared experiences with leaders from other parts of the country. We had particularly good teachers and they gave us exceptionally good material to review,” says Carmen. “I had never received a class like this, and learning virtually was a genuinely nice experience, although sometimes we had problems connecting, but for the course they gave us data and that really helped us. I am already certified, but I must adjust my Development Plan”, she adds with enthusiasm.
Carmen mentioned that her plan includes the roads, "which have to do with the socioeconomic development, because if there are no good roads, we can hardly have an economic solvency when marketing what we produce, such as milk and livestock, especially, and bringing food", she states.
“Another issue is that of natural resources, especially the conservation of water sources. We are in an area with heavy rains, but we cannot lower our guard. You have to take care of those forests, trees and take care of those water sources”, she firmly concludes.