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Volunteer in Colombia
Training in San Francisco

Note: The next openings on the FOR team in Colombia are in early 2010.

The Colombia Peace Presence is an accompaniment project begun in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, one of several rural communities in Colombia that have taken an extraordinary stand against war by refusing to support any armed group. FOR also has a team in Bogotá to support this accompaniment and to highlight other Colombian grassroots peace initiatives that youth, rural communities and others are building around the country. Volunteers serve for at least twelve months. FOR seeks committed and skilled volunteers, 23 years or older at the time of service, with sound judgment and proficient in Spanish.

PUBLIC STATEMENT

ATTEMPT ON THE LIFE AND PERSONAL INTEGRITY OF YENIFER RUEDA CARDENAS IN COMUNA 13 OF MEDELLÍN

We wish to express our concern and indignation at the acts against the integrity and the life of our friend YENIFER RUEDA CARDENAS, which took place on May 3, 2009 in the district of El Salado in Comuna 13 in Medellín.

By Teo Ballvé

This article appeared in the June 15, 2009 edition of The Nation.
May 27, 2009

Research support for this article was provided by the Puffin Foundation Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, with additional support from Project Word, a Massachusetts-based media nonprofit organization.

Photo: PAULHACKETT.NET
A group of workers in the militarized palm fields of Colombia

On May 14 Colombia's attorney general quietly posted notice on his office's website of a public hearing that will decide the fate of Coproagrosur, a palm oil cooperative based in the town of Simití in the northern province of Bolívar. A confessed drug-trafficking paramilitary chief known as Macaco had turned over to the government the cooperative's assets, which he claims to own, as part of a victim reparations program.

May 18, 2009, Oakland, CA: The United States is planning to establish a new military facility in Colombia that will give the U.S. increased capacity for military intervention throughout most of Latin America. Given the tense relations of Washington with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, as well as the Colombian military’s atrocious human rights record, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) believes the plan should be taken off the table.

Hear an interview with John Lindsay-Poland on this story on KPFA's La Raza Chronicles broadcast on May 26.

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February 26, 2009

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and more than 45 other national and regional human rights organizations and faith-based institutions today released a letter to President Barack Obama calling for a major change in U.S. policy toward Colombia. Responding to the President’s first address to a joint session of Congress – in which he stated the need to “go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs” and to “act boldly and wisely” – the groups urged the President to end a failed drug policy in Colombia and to invest in drug treatment for U.S. citizens and aid for the millions of Colombians displaced by war.