"Through our dreams we take a chance, we defy what has been imposed on us, we insist on living differently. The proposal of the Red Juvenil is to build a collective, to come together, live and unlearn together, to defend dignity, that of our own and many others.”

- Adriana Roman, Medellín Youth Network

For Adriana's speaking tour schedule, click here.

Adriana Roman's Bio, youth activist and human rights defender

Adriana Castaño Roman was born in 1977 in the city of Medellín, Colombia. Since graduating as a lawyer from the Law and Political Science department at the University of Antioquia, she has worked as a human rights defender with an integrated vision of the rights of young people, social, economic and cultural rights and the right to dignified housing for communities and displaced people. Adriana has been an activist with the Medellín Youth Network since 1996, when she first joined as a participant and coordinator of a youth group in one of Medellín’s neighborhoods. Since 1998, she has had many different roles in the organization: she coordinated a program focused on human rights, conscientious objection and active nonviolence, and has worked to accompany young conscientious objectors both legally and politically. Currently she gives legal advice to conscientious objectors, as well as denounces forced recruitment and participates in a new strategy of the Medellín Youth Network which works to expose the concentration of wealth in the hands of so few, and organizes political and legal action to enforce people’s rights to water, public services and housing. Adriana has also been a spokesperson in national and international events on peace and human rights and after her visit to the US in February, will be on her way to India, where she will represent the Medellín Youth Network at the War Resister’s League international conference.

Schedule of events

Monday, Feb 15 @ 12:30-2pm (to be confirmed)
University of California, Berkeley
School of Law – Boalt Hall

Monday, Feb 15 @ 5-7pm
La Peña Cultural Center
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705 USA

Wednesday, Feb 17
- 12-2pm
City College of San Francisco
50 Phelan Avenue
San Francisco, CA. 94112

- 6:30-8:30pm
California Institute of Integral Studies
1453 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA

Thursday, Feb 18 @ 12pm
12pm Brown bag lunch at Global Fund for Women
222 Sutter Street, Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94108
415 248-4800

Friday, Feb 19 @ 12pm
"Human Rights in an Election Year"
Global Exchange Brown Bag
2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94110

Friday, Feb 19 @ 6pm
A dinner Celebrating Creative Non-Violent Resistance in Colombia

A fundraiser for the Fellowship of Reconciliation Colombia Program
Friday, February 19, 6-9pm
Tickets: $20 (includes Colombian food, drink, and live music)
click here. to RSVP
or contact Liza Smith: liza@igc.org, 720.296.6429 for more info

Saturday, Feb 20 @ 10am
Desayuno Colombiano
La Casa de los Sentidos
2649 Folsom
San Francisco

Background on the Medellín Youth Network

The Medellín Youth Network (www.redjuvenil.org) is a youth organization that operates explicitly on principles of nonviolence. Started in 1990 by young people who had lost loved ones to the armed conflict, the group trains youth in nonviolence and cooperative play, supports young men and women who refuse to serve with the police, military or illegal armed groups, and promotes respect for human rights and youth's ideas in Colombian society. The Network's first members came together for mutual support. They wanted to break the stigma that “youth” equaled “violence” by making their pacifist views public. Their first actions were responses to violence in the city and included processions from the poor hillside neighborhoods that ring the city, with music and theater that expressed the participants’ rejection of violence. The heart of the Medellín Youth Network’s mission is to encourage young people’s belief in the value of all human life, to work together to overcome fear, and to become empowered to live and espouse these values. Their conscientious objection project exemplifies this approach. Male Colombians graduating from secondary school are required to serve a year in the police or the army, and there is no provision for alternative service or refusal on grounds of conscience. Those who do refuse are barred from higher education and from many jobs. They also support women to identify as conscientious objectors, defining conscientious objection to include all those who object to a system of war, oppression, violence and poverty.