GET INVOLVED
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We’re a Bristol-based collective working closely with social organizations in Colombia, so the two main places you can work with us are in and around Bristol and as a volunteer in Colombia. That said, we have supported people from elsewhere who’ve wanted to go and volunteer in Colombia and we collaborate with individuals and groups in other parts of Britain, so please feel free to get in touch even if you’re not based in or near Bristol.

In Bristol

We aim to be a friendly and supportive group and welcome new people who want to work with us. We try to be horizontally-organized, which means that we make decisions together and share our knowledge, skills and experiences. It doesn’t matter if you’re not an expert on Colombia or experienced activist - we aim to be a space in which people can contribute what they’re good at and learn from one another.

One thing that’s important to us is ‘active listening’ - i.e. really trying to understand where each other are coming from, so we discourage people from shouting others down or behaving in an aggressive way when we meet up. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then we invite you to get involved.

Here are a few examples of the sorts of things we need help with, although please feel free to come along with your own ideas and suggestions:

Organizing:
Any good at organizing events, actions, campaigns, or think you might be? If it’s you’re first time, we’re happy to hold your hand…

Translating:
We want to be able to publicize what’s going on in Colombia and what the social movements are doing, to provide a resource for activists here but, as you might imagine, most of the information we get is in Spanish. Some of us speak Spanish, but we’ve got a backlog of stuff that needs translating - if you can, ¡por favor, ayúdenos!

Fundraising:
None of us ever get paid for our work, but it still costs money to print materials, paint banners, call Colombia, send faxes, and invite Colombian activists over to speak. If you’ve got any bright ideas for fundraising, be they as humble as flogging a few home-made cakes (and which don’t involve accepting grants off multinational corporations of course) then we’ll give you all the support we can to help get them off the ground.

Arty things:
Any good at designing publicity materials or painting banners? Or got any other creative abilities you’d like to share with us? We can always use artists of all abilities to help make what’s going on in Colombia more visible. For example, we’ve got a photography exhibition that’s currently on tour, submitted stuff highlighting BP’s impact in Colombia for a squatted art exhibition, and are currently working on a compilation of short stories from Colombia in comic format, in collaboration with Colombian artists.

That’s just for starters, any other suggestions are welcome.

In Colombia

We work closely with a number of social organisations in Colombia and are part of the Red de Hermandad y Solidaridad con Colombia (Network of Friendship and Solidarity with Colombia), a space for coordination between autonomous, ‘grass-roots’ organisations in Colombia and between these Colombian organisations and collectives in other countries who work in solidarity with Colombia.

Groups in the Red de Hermandad work together around themes such as the impact of multinational corporations; the problem that the perpetrators of most human rights violations rarely get brought to justice; and a negotiated solution to the social and armed conflict in the country.

International collectives who are part of the Red de Hermandad not only take action in their own countries in solidarity with groups working on these issues in Colombia, but also provide ‘accompaniment’ to social organisations in Colombia - i.e. providing an international presence to deter the army or paramilitaries from killing social activists. The network is organised around the concept of horizontal relationships between peoples and we get actively involved in the work of the groups we’re accompanying and try to build collective processes of mobilisation.

If you want to visit Colombia but don’t feel you want to get so involved at this stage, we also take people on shorter ‘Missions’ to specific areas of Colombia to highlight what’s going on there and show our solidarity.

There are basically three types of accompaniment work, depending on your experience, although in practice these are flexible and depend very much on what you want to do and feel comfortable with:

1. People who are in Colombia for the first time or who have less experience can either (a) do several shorter periods of accompaniment and, in the process, learn about the work of various organizations and the reality in different parts the country or (b) work with one organization but without being given huge amounts of responsibility.

2. People with more experience of accompaniment or political work are normally linked to one organization during their time in Colombia, often (although not always) in rural areas.

3. People with specific areas of knowledge might be linked into relevant areas of the Red de Hermandad’s activities. E.g. a plumber might help displaced communities returning to their land with the installation of water and sanitation, an academic might help with a research project, and so on.

The support we’d provide:
Because of the security situation faced by Colombian social movements, everyone who does accompaniment work with the Red de Hermandad must have the backing of one of the groups who are part of the network.

Local groups commit to giving you the necessary training before you start working in Colombia. Espacio would either do this one-to-one or at a weekend workshop if there were a few people interested. When you got to Colombia, you’d also receive additional workshops on things like your legal rights and responsibilities as an international and an up-date on the political situation in Colombia.

We’d also commit to taking responsibility for your actions whilst you’re in Colombia - i.e. as well as vouching for your maturity and personal integrity (that you’re not a corporate infiltrator etc.) we would also help if you got into any difficulties, such as getting detained (although, touch wood, this hasn’t happened to any of us yet).

Because of the ethos of Espacio and because we’re aware that accompaniment work can be very emotionally-draining, we would also do our best to be as supportive as possible before, during and after your time in Colombia.

Groups in the Red de Hermandad contribute to the rent of a house in Bogotá, from where the accompaniment work is coordinated and where international accompaniers can stay for a low cost whenever they’re in Bogotá.

What you’d need to do:
Most importantly, because of the situation in Colombia, we need to know and trust you - normally from having worked together.

You’d also have to be able to communicate without difficulty in Spanish (although some people with an intermediate level of Spanish have taken classes in Colombia before starting accompaniment work).

There’s no minimum age for people working with the Red de Hermandad (other organizations, such as Peace Brigades International won’t take people aged less than 25). It’s up to the various local groups to only give our recommendation to people we think are mature enough to cope with working in the context of Colombia, and lots of people well under 25 have done accompaniment work with the network.

Before you arrive, you would need to have read the Red de Hermandad’s training dossier and have a reasonable understanding of the situation in Colombia and of the security measures you should follow - we’d help with this part, as above.

Bear in mind that you’d need to contact us several months before you were planning to go to Colombia, so that we can get to know you and give you the necessary training and contact the Red de Hermandad in time for your visa to be processed (people doing accompaniment work in Colombia should normally be on a ‘cooperante’ visa and you should allow a couple of months for this to be processed).

You’d also have to commit to keeping in regular contact with Espacio whilst you’re away, not only so that we know you’re ok, but also because the idea behind the Red de Hermandad as a network is that you’re not just there as a human shield but also part of building collective processes of solidarity and mobilisation internationally.

You can read the Dossier for Red de Hermandad y Solidaridad con Colombia (Network of Friendship and Solidarity with Colombia) here in Spanish, and highlights from the dossier here, in English. (The English file is a Word Document - full PDF coming soon.)

If anything’s not clear, or you want to know more, please contact us.