Healing for Sexual Violence Survivors in Colombia

Taller de Vida (TdV) is a community-based organization run by a team of psychologists, educational social workers, and volunteers who support the healing, social rehabilitation, and power building of former child soldiers and young women and girl survivors of sexual and gender-based violence within the context of the Colombian armed conflict. Through the power of art therapy, creative workshops, human rights education, and practical skills training, TdV is helping youth and communities recover from violence and providing them the tools to become actors of peace and contribute to the building of non-violent social conditions in Colombia.

MADRE began supporting TdV in 2002 to support the demobilization and reintegration process of child soldiers recruited by armed actors in the conflict. As the peace process implementation moves forward, TdV works to advance Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples’ meaningful participation at the local and national level to ensure that collective rights, gender and racial justice, and other pertinent guarantees are upheld. 

With your support, MADRE and TdV are working to build the recognition of persecution based on gender in the context of the decades-long conflict—including gender and racial/ethnic persecution against Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples—with the aim of ensuring meaningful access and inclusion in the appropriate reparations in the transitional justice process.

As we have seen with partners around the world, when women’s community based-solutions are centered in the transitional justice process, communities are able to come together to collectively heal and bring about long-term solutions for social change and peacebuilding. As a result, women and girls are breaking the silence in their communities around conflict-related and gender-based violence to build solidarity, empathy, and healing practices that break cycles of violence. 

Thank you for showing your solidarity and support to women and girls in Colombia as they advance their rights and create restorative spaces for healing.