Colombia: No Child Should be a Soldier

We recently received an email from Stella Duque, director of our sister organization Taller de Vida. She shared some exciting updates from her programs with former child soldiers and children at high risk of being recruited in Colombia’s armed conflict.

Taller de Vida is preparing to launch an important campaign to confront the recruitment of child soldiers in Colombia. For many children from poor families, joining an armed group is the only way to get a meal each day. Once a child is recruited, armed groups become the only family they know. They grow up knowing nothing but a life of combat, perpetuating a war that has already lasted more than 40 years.

Stella and Taller de Vida are working to break this harmful cycle. Their programs offer trauma counseling, art therapy and recreational programs that allow children to heal from their experiences of war.

The campaign "Take my body out of the war" (Saquen mi cuerpo de la guerra) will feature an exposition of photos and texts created by the former child soldiers who participate in Taller de Vida’s art therapy workshops. The exposition will give these children a platform to raise awareness, raise their voices and share their experiences of life in armed conflict.

This campaign, like so much of Taller de Vida's work, will serve as a therapeutic outlet for these children. Thank you for supporting this crucial work!

In Colombia, MADRE partners with our sister organization Taller de Vida to provide resources, rehabilitation, and healing through art to former child soldiers. When our partners gave a group of children the chance to express themselves through drawings, they spoke of their experiences and their hopes in their own unique voices.

Below are a few of their drawings and their thoughts.

Captions:

Drawing 1 – “I do not want to go back to an armed group and experience how I spent my childhood. I do not want to go back and be in an armed group or stay on a mountain and endure the cold or listen to the helicopters of the army”.

Drawing 2 – “I want to take a few steps to teach me more about love, happiness, the most important thing for me is to lead a new life, watch the sun brighten more light my path every day. I want to help children and help them recognize the resources they have”.

Drawing 3 – “I do not want to go back and live what I lived through. I do not want to shoot others and make them suffer in the worst possible way and feel alone in the world”.

Drawing 4 – “The step I would like to take in my life is to take back what I never had. And now I would like to study to move forward and help my family and be happy which is why I do what I can to have moral and strength to be what I want to be: a nurse, and to always have my own thoughts”.

Drawing 5 – “I do not want to go back to the hatred, the resentment, to a river of blood, pain, violation. I do not want to go back and see a lot of young people in the war. The world is full of obstacles that you need to know how to cross”.

Drawing 6 – “What I want most is to feel as free as the air to take a step forward. And to overcome everything I would like to take a step to enable myself and be a good person. And I hope that tomorrow I can tell my story without fear and without fear and dread”.