In Colombia, a former child soldier captioned her photo of a tree she took as part of her photography project with Taller de Vida's Psychosocial Development and Consulting Center.
"My guardian mother took me to Taller de Vida for psychosocial support–I told them everything I had lived through. They prepared me for my meeting with my grandmother, whom I had left without telling her anything," says Sofia regretfully."At Taller, I felt like a child again–we sang, they gave us delicious food, and they listened to us. For the first time in my life, I went to the movies and met important people from universities and other countries.
, Terre des Hommes Germany, Karin Von Hozbrink of Germany, individuals, and civil society fund its services. "In partnership with Taller de Vida we’re working together to bring a stable peace in Colombia's most affected communities and help people heal from war’s disruption and sorrow,” says Yifat Susskind, Executive Director of MADRE.
Trained in mountain camps with 60 others, ages 12 to 14, Sofia hopes no one experiences hard labor or sexual exploitation. While her commanders promised a better future, the reality and abuse for the poverty-stricken youth was anything but bright. Joining Taller's photography collective, she “learned to shoot a camera, not a gun."
Sofia and her daughter have a new life in a new city. A student herself, she earned an income by selling sundries from a stall at a local bus terminal, but the pandemic forced her to close it. Helping her daughter with schoolwork sent via WhatsApp, Taller de Vida helps her pay for the costly Internet minutes. "Being involved in armed conflict leaves wounds in the soul–it's difficult to recover. It hurts seeing the recent attacks on FARC dissident camps–girls getting killed.
Colombia's political violence, Duque says,"is linked to land tenure, dispossession of territories, and territorial control for extractive exploitation for the development of macro projects." Exacerbated by the continuous assassination of leaders defending their territories and the possibility of returning to their communities, Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples are targets of fear tactics.
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