Education is a Conversation

At the beginning of March there were two historic days calling for a widespread stop of violence against women in Mexico. On Sunday, March 8th, nearly 80,000 people (primarily women) marched from the Monument of the Revolution to the Zocalo in Mexico City to call attention to the alarming rates of femicides and other acts of gender-based violence in the country. Then, on Monday, March 9th, women staged a national strike, with 7 out of 10 women participating in some way. To participate in the strike, women were invited to miss work, not buy anything, and not use social media as a simulation of disappearance and as a way of remembering and reflecting on all the women who have disappeared or been killed in Mexico. 

These recent events have caused us to see even more clearly the importance of projects like Community Narrative Practice (CNP), which open discussions of gender relations in communities. With CNP, men and women talk about the current relations in their community not by being pressured to talk about their own lives, but by talking about characters in storybooks who were created based anonomous interviews in their community.  With reflection about the current situation comes an opportunity for change. 

Currently, Dr. Kathleen Cash is in the process of reviewing the more than 120 interviews collected in Chiapas and finding the patterns.  Then, the storybooks will be created, local leaders will be trained, and discussion groups can begin. Once we evaluate the program in Chiapas, Amextra plans to implement the program in other regions where we work as well, starting with the Highlands of Guerrero.  
 
Thank you for joining us on this journey.