Stories that Move and Resist

Stories that Move and Resist A Journey towards Resilience

The present document is a product of RET International´s Regional Project implemented in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela with support from the US State Department´s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (BPRM).

RET International Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience First Edition. Panama City, 2015 ISBN XXX-XX-XXXX-X

Remi Mannaert, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, RET. Final Review Marina Anselme, Chief Programme Development & Evaluation Officer, RET. Supervision and General Coordination Ángela María Escobar, Deputy Director for Latin America & the Caribbean, RET. Coordination and Editorial Review Markel R. Méndez H., Deputy Director for Latin America & the Caribbean, RET. Technical Development Paula Uribe, Programmes Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean, RET. Narrative Development Stivens Parra Gámez, Spanish language specialist.

Graphic Design www.grafoscopio.co

This publication reflects the commitment of each one of RET´s team members from the region along with the participants in the processes developed and implemented together. © RET International - All rights reserved

Content

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PROLOGUE

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02 INTRODUCTION Protective Factors and Developing Resilience

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I - From the Event that Caused the Displacement to the Emotional Breakdown

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II - Adapting to the New Context

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III – The Integration Process

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03 NARRATIVES A Clean Heart to Overcome Adversity

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Luisa is Reborn

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Beyond feeling Melancholy are Dreams Rosa’s New Dress Stitching a New Life

34 38

We Found Each Other Again

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Her Voice Gets Stronger

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They Became Leaders by Overcoming Obstacles

52 57

The Chef of Life Dreams that Come True

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EPILOGUE

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

PROLOGUE This publication is about the capacity of displaced persons to persevere and overcome adversity. The following pages are a journey through ten life stories that were affected and fragmented by the armed conflict in Colombia. The voices that tell these stories are a reminder of the reality faced by hundreds of thousands of people on the continent and the obligation that we all have to be aware of this reality and unite our efforts to eradicate all forms of violence and discrimination.

This publication is devoted to highlighting the phenomenon of resilience through the sharing of the personal narratives of refugee men, women and youth. The authors of these narratives are all currently living in different Latin American and Caribbean countries after they were forced to leave Colombia because their lives were at risk as a result of the armed conflict in the country.

To collect the information for this book, 28 in-depth interviews were conducted, more than 60 hours of conversations were transcribed and endless pages of testimonies were analyzed, which led to the following stories presented below being selected for publication. These stories are a reflection of the narratives told by the protagonists. Due to security reasons, some details have been modified and others intentionally omitted, but each story published in this book maintains the narra-

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tive structure and accuracy of the experiences, exactly as they were told.

This document responds to RET International’s accumulated institutional experience in the framework of the “Strengthening Capacities to Guarantee Humanitarian Assistance and the Social, Economic and Educational Integration of Refugee Families (2013-2015)” project, which is particularly focused on the area of psychosocial assistance. This project has been generously supported by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) from the US Department of State.

It is worth highlighting that more than 2000 refugee families participated in this project, involving a total of 9000 participants including more than 4000 young people. These populations participated in the project’s humanitarian assistance, livelihoods, protection mechanisms, socio-cultural integration and institutional strengthening components. RET International’s action-based approach is systemic and comprehensive and aims to mitigate the impact that violence, uprooting and forced displacement have on a human being.

The participants in the process that RET has been implementing over the course of these last three years have taught us about the capacity of refugees to overcome adversity and the strength that they possess to stay strong, even when they have lost everything. This has helped RET to learn about resilience, the most astonishing human capacity and the utmost example of adaptability and resistance. Today, RET knows it is possible to create the right conditions to intentionally boost resilience mechanisms used by people, families and

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

communities. RET is convinced that this is the right way to achieve the sustainability of the assistance processes for populations affected by armed conflict and disasters. Essentially this highlights people’s knowledge and experiences and allows human tragedies to be addressed with dignity.

By way of introduction, the approach RET uses to implement psychosocial support, the way in which the notion of resilience is addressed in the provision of assistance for refugee families and the implications that these elements have on a refugee’s particular situation are all covered in this book.

This text is a journey through experiences that demonstrate a specific process, beginning when the event causing displacement occurs. The covers the emotional impact of displacement, adaptation to the new context and integration in the host community. Each one of these narratives is organized into these three stages, and by publishing them together the reader can benefit from the different ways that each person experienced and tells their story.

RET hopes that this publication acts as a guide for everyone that works in the humanitarian sector and in the transition to development in order to support and promote increasingly more humane, integrated and sustainable approaches for the assistance, rehabilitation and recovery processes of people that are more and more affected by conflict and forced displacement across the world.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

INTRODUCTION Protective Factors and Developing Resilience

Resistance is woven: you don’t have to look for it just inside the person nor their environment but between the two, because it constantly ties together an intimate process with the social environment.

Cyrulnik

According to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is “any person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/ herself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it� .

economic integration in several countries in the region.

The psychosocial assistance component is included in this framework as an important element of the integrated approach and comprehensive strategy RET implements to ensure the provision of assistance and support for families in need of international protection. The notion of resilience has emerged with a lot of force in this area as a key aspect in processes to strengthen families and their capacity to respond to forced displacement and integration in the host communities.

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Over the last eight years, RET International has been working in Latin America and the Caribbean to strengthen the capacities of more than 100,000 persons in need of international protection, as well as the communities that host them, in order to guarantee their emotional recovery and socio1 United Nations General Assembly 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Resolution 429 (V), July 28th 1951.

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It is well known that reactions to adversity vary from person to person. Resilience is the capacity human beings have to face and overcome an event that has affected their life. Their development is based on the relationship a person has with their environment. If a person is more resilient, they have social bonds and support networks in the family, at school, at work and in the community. Internal and external protection factors are strengthened

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

and developed through positive relationships that increase resilience.

“I was speaking the other day with a group of women about economic, physical or family losses and all types of death. I think these experiences become our teachers so that whenever there is a death in my life, I grow and assume that there is nothing strong enough to kill me unless I let it, and that this suffering is optional”. (Testimony) RET’s psychosocial support and assistance approach is not just focused on identifying and treating trauma, disorders or problems of persons in need of international protection2 but primarily on the identification of this population their appropriation of new perspectives that will help them rebuild their own lives.

Papadopoulos states: “it is well known that following a difficult and intense experience, people may respond in ways that emphasize renewal rather than the damaging effects of the experience. Despite (or even because of) the pain, disorientation, disruption, devastation and loss, people may still feel that the very same ‘traumatic’ experience has also made them re-evaluate their priorities in life, change their lifestyles and acquire new values – all in all, experiencing a substantial change and renewal in their lives”3.

The psychosocial support actions aim to promote the wellbeing, self-protection and recovery of life options that contribute to adaptation to the new context.

RET’s integrated intervention approach is mainly focused on assessing the different responses to adversity. This not only includes negative responses, such as psychological effects, but also the resources and strengths that emerge in the people that receive assistance.

2. Persons in need of international protection are considered to be: asylum seekers; people that have been granted refugee status; and people of interest identified by UNHCR that have yet to access the applica-tion process.

3. Papadopoulos, Renos K. Refugees and Psychological Trauma: Psychosocial perspectives. 2006.

“I am closer to my family now. In Cali I was more focused on material things and because I liked my ‘expensive’ lifestyle, I focused on work. My son had his nanny and his material things but he didn’t have me as a mother. That is why I said that sometimes things happen in life so that you learn something different. I can thank this country and process for that”. (Testimony) Resilience is based on diverse capacities: protecting your own integrity under pressure; and forging a vital positive behavior in spite of difficult circumstances (Vanistendael, 1994). In RET’s experience with persons in need of international protection, it is important for people to be able to overcome a traumatic event and develop resources to progress in the integration process in the host communities.

RET’s intervention approach to resilience in Latin America RET’s intervention promotes activating and developing resilience in people and their families through psychosocial support provided upon their arrival to host countries. This provides an early response to the emotional problems generated by displacement, helps identify personal resources and promotes support networks that facilitate individual development and necessary social interactions. This is implemented individually, in a family or with groups, depending on each participant’s initial assessment.

A psychosocial response plan is established during the initial contact in accordance with the individual, family and community dynamics4. The plan is coordinated with other services and programs that RET provides to persons in need of international protection. For example, this involves the recovery of livelihoods, guaranteeing the full enjoyment of rights (health, 4. This means seeing the participant (project’s direct beneficiary) as an active survivor, focusing on their capacities, values and positive attributes and not on their weaknesses and pathologies (although it is necessary to be aware of them).

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

Over the course of the project’s three years, 2,066 family members (1,460 females and 606 males) belonging to 1,440 families received individual and family psychosocial support and 1,233 people participated in groups workshops and therapeutic spaces designed in accordance with the needs and interests of the target population.

(Up to June 30th, 2015)

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

education and shelter) and youth empowerment through the promotion of socio-cultural networks. All of these are established in the program components that include an integrated approach to meeting the needs of persons in need of international protection in host countries. Through psychosocial assistance, RET offers and implements an integrated response that benefits the different dimensions of people’s lives in order to activate resilience, promote protection factors and reconstruct the social fabric.

RET’s integrated approach also includes institutional strengthening to promote the access to and quality of health assistance for the population in need of international protection in host communities, achieved through coordination with local technical networks and public authorities. This is focused on: • Processes to raise awareness and provide training on the right to asylum, designed for officials from the health network.

• Implementing referral protocols and mechanisms5.

• Socializing access routes to public health programs and services.

All of this has the aim of expanding coverage, quality and the appropriateness of mental health services for the population in need of international protection in all of the localities and regions where this population resides.

This is how the approach and the program components described above help RET in Latin America to coherently and sustainably respond to their institutional mission: RET is committed to supporting communities in order to satisfy educational needs, in the broadest sense, for youth living in vulnerable situations as a result of displacement, violence, armed conflicts and disaster.

5. In line with the support at multiple levels contained in the IASC guidelines on mental health and psy-chosocial support.

I. From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown The number of displaced persons in the context of armed conflicts has continued to increase throughout the world. According to estimates from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there were 59.5 million displaced persons in December 2014. Out of these, 19.5 million are refugees, 38.2 million are internally displaced and 1.8 million are asylum seekers6. In addition, there are around 500,000 Colombians that are victims of the armed conflict living in other countries.

This phenomenon not only involves significant economic losses, moral, political, environmental and socio-cultural damages and violations and abuses of human rights, but it also impacts this population’s mental health by causing emotional and psychological damage. The capacity to respond to these realities is limited in many contexts.

“Chaos and violence, in their different forms, increase the risks of psychological trauma. In fact, armed conflict don’t just produce deaths, injuries and physical disabilities, but also leave a mark on the lives of people, families and societies”7.

When forced displacement caused by armed conflict or violence puts someone’s own physical safety at risk, a lot of pressure is placed on people, including a number of diverse communities. This can generate a wide range of reactions that affect psychological and emotional wellbeing.

6. Global Trends for Refugees and other People of Interest. UNHCR, 2014.

7. Rodriguez Jorge, Alejandro de la Torre and Claudio Miranda. Mental Health During Armed Conflict. Biomédica, 2002.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“The impact and damage caused by wars are normally measured by the number of deaths and the material destruction they cause. However, viewing this phenomenon from the perspective of the victims indicates that there are other unquantifiable and even intangible effects of the conflict. The effects of the conflict have deeply altered the life plans of thousands of people and families, curtailing part of the society’s future possibilities and undermined democratic development”8.

Given the scale of this phenomenon in the world and particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, where mental health assistance in some contexts is limited, it is essential for psychosocial support actions to be implemented that help persons in need of international protection to recuperate their normal behavior and activate and develop resilience mechanisms.

In Latin America, the armed conflict in Colombia has generated one of the greatest crises in the territory. According to the Colombian Victim’s Unit for Integrated Assistance and Reparations, 6,360,302 people have been specifically affected by displacement up to August 1st 2015, a significant percentage of the total number of 7,558,854 victims recorded in the Victims Registry 9. These figures are the result of 60 years of internal armed conflict and violence generated by illegal armed groups, drugtrafficking and territorial control. The lack of security guarantees has forced millions of Colombians to cross borders in search of international protection.

During armed conflicts, the psychosocial wellbeing of people, families and communities is heavily affected. The situation intensifies in these cases due to the continuance and repetition of victimizing acts. This means that it is essential that the provision of psychosocial assistance considers the possible effects of displacement and the various dimensions of the resilience process.

8. The Impact and Damage Caused by the Armed Conflict in Colombia. ClubEnsayos.com. Viewed on 02, 2014. https://www.clubensayos.com/Historia/LOS-IMPACTOS-Y-LOS-DAÑOS-CAUSADOS-POR-EL/1473570.html 9. Also finding victims from situations like homicide, threats, land dispossession, terrorist acts, forced disappearance, anti-personnel mines and unexploded ordinance, kidnapping, recruitment of children and adolescents and crimes against sexual freedom and integrity. http://rni.unidadvictimas.gov.co/?q=node/107

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In emergency and conflict contexts, most people believe that the amount of pain experienced by victims would seriously affect their mental health and open the door to disorders like depression, bipolarity or schizophrenia. Surprisingly, very few people develop these disorders. “It is wrong to think that every victim of forced displacement has some disorder. Many suffer, but not all have medical conditions”, explains psychologist Lina Rondon, Peace Team Coordinator for the Colombian Victim’s Unit for Integrated Assistance and Reparations.

According to Lina, 30% of displaced persons show mild symptoms of mental health issues and less than 5% suffer from complex mental health problems. “But 100% suffer”, she insists.

In addition to the possible psychological effects that are a consequence of trauma, it is necessary to consider other phenomena and emotional damage such as fear, guilt, family breakdown, violence, risky sexual behavior and drug abuse.

The psychosocial support process has to include different elements since it is dealing with a highly complex reality that impacts every person differently.

The events that lead an individual and their family into seeking asylum, the experience of forced displacement, arriving to a new territory and the multiple challenges faced in the settlement process produce unpredictable reactions and responses.

Papadopolus10 points out that “reactions to adversity and devastating consequences of having to go into exile can vary enormously from individual to individual, depending on a number of different factors,” amongst which include: • Personal: personal history; psychological characteristics; coping mechanisms; strengths and weaknesses; status; and education.

• Relationships - support network (social capital): family (nuclear and extended); and community.

• Gender • Position of power: levels of impotence; and humiliation.

10. Papadopoulos, Renos K. Refugees and Psychological Trauma: Psychosocial Perspectives. 2006

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

• Real circumstances behind devastating events: predictability; isolation; duration; and effects.

• Sense or meaning given to the events and the experiences: political; religious; and/or ideological.

• Hope or despair.

The testimonies and stories that are included in publication are a reflection of this complex processes faced by persons in need of international protection. Forced displacement and exile are some of the largest traumas facing the continent, particularly the Latin American and Caribbean region. Violence and sustained conflicts occur in various countries of the region.

II. Adapting to the New Context After recognizing the situation that is causing the forced displacement, followed by the emotional impact generated by seeing your own life threatened by factors that are beyond your control, suddenly the decision comes to leave, travel and finally arrive to a new territory. The individual has to live within a new context in this new place – that to them is very strange – and they must face an extremely vulnerable situation and start the adaptation and integration process if it’s possible.

“I’m not hurt by the guerillas because that is what they had to do at that time and I wouldn’t be the person I am today if that hadn’t happened. I’m not angry at my country, I’m not angry in any way. My heart is completely clean and I can say that I exist” (Testimony)

Local integration is one of the three “long-lasting solutions” for refugees proposed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in collaboration with the host countries and countries of origin. The other long-lasting solutions involve the refugees voluntarily repatriating to their country of origin or resettlement in a third country.

However, the emphasis of this publication is not on the trauma suffered, although reflecting on the pain can’t be avoided, but this book instead focuses on the recovery process and the resilience mechanisms that are activated by the protagonists. This population receives assistance from RET’ in the host countries using the psychosocial assistance approach that is presented here.

According to UNHCR 11, local integration is based on the assumption that the refugees will remain in the country that provides asylum permanently and find a solution to their difficult situation in the host community. This allows them to rebuild their lives, become self-sufficient again and generate new sustainable livelihoods as contributing members of the host societies 12.

There are two dimensions this book aims to highlight in terms of the resilience process: the first relates to the event that caused the displacement, which is associated with a threatening and violent situation (kidnapping, threats, mobility restrictions, attempts of recruitment by illegal armed groups, gender based violence, amongst others); and the second is related to the challenges integrating into the country or host community.

In discussions with refugees and asylum seekers that are participants in the project RET is implementing in the region, the stories behind their displacement, the situations that triggered the decision to safeguard their life and the lives of their families, the move and settling in a new country, feelings of nostalgia, 11. According to UNHCR, local integration is a gradual process that occurs in three settings: Legal: refu-gees are progressively granted a wide range of rights similar to those enjoyed by citizens. This leads them to eventually obtaining permanent residence and perhaps citizenship; Economic: refugees gradually become less dependent on assistance from the host country or humanitarian assistance and are increasingly more self-sufficient, being able to help themselves and contribute to the local economy; and Social and Cultural: the interaction between refugees and the local community helps refugees to participate in the their new country’s social life without fear of discrimination or hostility.

12. The Benefits of Belonging: Local Integration Options and Opportunities for Host Countries, Communi-ties and Refugees. UNHCR, 2011.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

alienation and fear were evident, as well as ongoing uncertainties about the present and future.

“It was very difficult because I was living with my mom and leaving her was the hardest part for me. She was the main source of support I had. Despite my parents being separated we’ve always been a very close family. They had a good relationship so there weren’t any problems with that. Leaving my family and my brother was the most difficult part for me” (Testimony).

Parents are mainly worried about survival, food and housing, which are much more difficult to obtain if the family does not have economic resources or support networks in the host communities. They almost immediately start worrying about their children’s education and begin to look for a school in the new location. This is one of the priorities for most families.

A close link with RET is established when the families arrive through the provision of psychosocial work.

Psychosocial conditions are identified and support provided to address any issues, while a resilience reactivation process begins that facilitates their integration process. As a result, work is focused on developing people’s competencies (knowledge, abilities and skills), support is provided in acquiring and strengthening social skills to help people adapt to the changes and participants are also offered practical tools that help them face daily challenges.

These include: • Understanding the local language, codes and symbols, particularly in cases of displacement between rural and urban zones.

• Adapting to new living conditions, long-distance relationships, grief and material and moral losses.

• Adapting to changes concerning individual and community identities (communication, documentation, migratory status, nationality, amongst others)

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• Acquiring local habits and customs without losing touch with their own traditions from their place of origin.

• Dealing with possible discrimination in the host communities.

• Understanding economic and market dynamics (currency, transactions, supply and demand of products) Resilience is directly linked to protective factors that an individual, a family or a community build over the course of their existence. These factors are understood as a set of relationships established in a system that becomes a support network and provides emotional, physical, psychological and economic security, helping individuals to improve their living conditions, find shelter and access support during difficult times.

(…) When I think about returning and facing that risk, I find a hand grabbing me and pushing me forward. RET has supported us economically, myself with my sewing business and my sister with her cleaning products project. It is something we are all extremely grateful for in the family” (Testimony).

Recognizing their own capacities, finding family support even when they are redefining their roles and relationships, reconnecting with aspirations and dreams, establishing life projects, getting involved and participating in support groups and cultural or sports activities, these are just a part of the process of rebuilding networks that end up turning into resilience mechanisms.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

III. The Integration Process The notion of resilience is dynamic and brings together general and common aspects for all those that experience traumatic events, but it is also specific to each human being. In practice, it is as varied as the human beings that express and experience it.

The stories that have been shared have common elements, such as the presence of conflicting risk and protection factors, which can appear simultaneously in any context or circumstance. Authors like Jadue, Galindo and Navarro (2005) identify that protective factors can also become risk factors when relationships or characteristics are modified and generate conflict. The family, which can mostly be considered a protective factor, can become a risk factor when it doesn’t provide its members with the necessary support or produces violent dynamics that cause harm to family members13.

Using the integrated assistance approach implemented by RET, resilience aims to assist or confront social risk situations that families in need of international protection are exposed to as part of their integration process in host communities.

This approach activates individual family and community protective factors. It is implemented with the nuclear family using a participatory approach in which participants’ opinions, potential, needs and experiences are used as the basis for providing the assistance and support required14.

“I have been participating in the project for almost three years. I was a bit shyer when I arrived, or you could say I was very closed off to other people. I thought that my comfort zone was being by myself, alone and isolated. With RET I’ve learned to 13. Jadue J., Gladys; Galindo M., Ana; Navarro N., Lorena. Protective and Risk Factors for Developing Resilience found in an Educational Community at Social Risk.

Pedagogical Studies, Vol. XXXI, #2, 2005, pp 43-55 Austral University of Valdivia Chiles 14. Implementing family therapy sessions, group workshops and therapeutic group sessions.

loosen up and this has helped out me a lot.

It has been very enriching at the personal level because I’ve realized that it’s not just me and that there are also a lot of people that have gone through difficult things and have been able to move forward” (Testimony).

Some of the situations that have required psychosocial support for members of participating families (population in need of international protection and members of the host community) are mentioned below: • Difficulties with family relationships, particularly parents towards their children. This is often successfully overcome through impulse control techniques, conflict management and resolution, positive parenting guidelines, establishing agreements at the family level and distributing roles in the family using a gender-equality approach. This situation occurs in all age groups.

• Relationship Problems. Accompanied through promoting assertive communication, agreements and commitments in terms of distributing responsibilities in the home using an equality approach. This also involves focusing on individual identity, authentication and empowering each person’s role in their new context. This situation mainly affects economically active men and women in their communities of origin, women that are in mourning, family groups that have been separated due to displacement and adolescents and youth in the educational system and in the host community.

• Violent Situations. These situations were reduced thanks to work that has focused on improving selfesteem, viewing the reality of the family from the point of view of the victim of violence, resilience workshops to make assertive decisions when facing violence and establishing indicators to help overcome this problem.

• Sexual Abuse. Accompaniment is provided through supporting the evoking of emotions, rationalizing, letting go of guilt and interiorizing achievements

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

in a life plan, addressed through a methodology that focuses on addressing this trauma through symbolic acts. Victims are referred to specialist institutions for support. This is a particular issue for young women where the sexual abuse triggered the displacement and/or adult women who suffered sexual abuse during childhood or adolescence but the displacement reactivated the trauma.

• Drug Abuse. Focused on raising awareness and interiorizing and accepting the problem, both for the consumer and their families. People with drug problems are then referred to specialist treatment centers, particularly for adolescents and youth.

• Learning Challenges and Behavioral Problems. This is more frequent in adolescents. It is addressed by strengthening the monitoring and accompaniment for the children’s parents and, strengthening regulations, roles and limits, establishing contingency plans with the family and ruling out neurological problems through direct referrals to specialist services in the public health system.

• Risky sexual behavior among adolescents and youth and teen pregnancy. Educational support was delivered in terms of preventing sexually transmitted diseases and adequately using birth control methods.

It is necessary to consider the refugee population’s full enjoyment of rights in every situation. This is particularly the case with the aspects identified by UNCHR, such as the deteriorated quality of asylum and the gaps in the protection framework, which is much less comprehensive in some of the host countries.

The intervention aims to promote substantial changes in people’s lives despite the traumatic situations or obstacles to development that they face caused by forced displacement or armed conflict. RET aspires to empower participants so that through their active involvement in searching for alternative solutions to the difficulties they face, they can exercise their rights and improve their wellbeing.

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I like to go and help at the schools for example. I explain to people that they have to let you study no matter what. I tell them that they have rights and that they can do this and that. If the problem is very serious, RET goes and talks with them. They are looking out to see that we are ok and that the teachers see that despite being Colombians and refugees, children have rights that have to be respected. There can’t be any mistreatment.” (Testimony)

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

NARRATIVES In the following section of this publication, the stories of Colombian refugees living in different countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region will be presented.

Their stories have been divided into three stages: 1) from the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown; 2) adapting to the new context; and 3) the integration process.

The stories draw on the experiences and feelings of each of the participants, from the moment they decided to leave their country of origin until when they start to become aware of the indicators of socio-economic integration in the host country and begin to overcome the tragic and debilitating event.

This process consists of the resilience elements that have helped this population overcome adversity and move forward with their lives.

The names have been changed in some cases to safeguard the identity of the participants. Some details of their stories have also been modified, but essentially all of the stories are real as told by the protagonists and carefully recorded as part of the integrated assistance process that RET provides to this population.

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This publication includes the following stories:

1. Claudia and her two children, Juan and Valentina, in A Clean Heart to Overcome Adversity.

2. Luisa, who was displaced with her mother and small son. Her story is called, Luisa is Reborn.

3. Angie, a young woman who is getting on with her life despite missing her homeland in Beyond feeling Melancholy are Dreams.

4. Rosa, who is rebuilding her life together with her 12-year-old daughter in Rosa’s New Dress.

5. Daniel, a young people that skates around a new city while promoting an income generating initiative in Stitching a New Life.

6. Maria, who together with her husband finally found a home in We Found Each Other Again.

7. Nanlly, who found her strength and leadership in Her Voice Gets Stronger.

8. Rodrigo and Julieta, who left a farm to become a role model for their fellow refugee in They Became Leaders by Overcoming Obstacles.

9. Jesmer, who through perseverance has been able to establish himself in The Chef of Life.

10. Mayra, who has had to grow up and start managing her life in Dreams that Come True.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

1.A Clean Heart to Overcome Adversity From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown Life has put Claudia through the most grueling tests, from losing her economic stability, enduring the illness that one of her children has, seeing her home destroyed and even being separated from her mother and siblings for more than a decade. She had a lonely and bitter heart for a long time.

The first test came when the textile factory that she owned was closed following the increase in textiles imported from Asia in Colombia, which severely affected the national industry.

“My husband and I had a textile factory but with the opening up of the Colombian economy a lot of people went into the business of importing fabrics from India and China and things got very difficult. It wasn’t easy to compete with factory-made fabrics with fabrics made from scratch. So the factory scaled down and things started getting worse and worse”, she notes.

In a short space of time the loom stopped spinning and problems started invading her home. Fortunately, they had the strength at that time to reorganize themselves and look for other opportunities. Claudia’s husband decided to get into the oil industry, which was at that time the leading industry in the national economy.

They got into the business of providing supplies for oil extraction operations, which was going through a meteoric rise that substantially benefitted them. They felt safe for a time because their economic problems were really a thing of the past. This was when they suffered a big blow, this time caused the armed conflict. The FARC, a guerilla group in Colombia, branded

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her husband a paramilitary collaborator and burned his machinery and kidnapped him.

“He had rented some machinery from an oil company and those machines were set on fire. When he went to see what had happened, the guerilla kidnapped him along with his partner and an engineer that had gone with them. According to the guerilla, my husband was paying protection money to the paramilitaries and so they labelled him as a paramilitary collaborator”, she tells.

After the kidnapping, Claudia faced a nightmare.

She didn’t know how to explain the situation to her children and she couldn’t sleep. There was an impenetrable emptiness in her home, in her bed and in her eyes. Her fair skin became dark and dry.

“A few days later the guerilla set a ransom of a million and a half dollars to release them. I had no choice but to sell all the property we had. The families of my husband’s partner and the engineer also did the same until we had the money. We were still missing 300 million pesos (COP), so the local Mayor at the time, who was known to the guerrilla, mediated to obtain their freedom. Unfortunately, they killed the engineer”, she asserted.

The happiness of having saved her husband quickly vanished. In a short matter of time, the economic and social problems of her country put them into a complex situation. The FARC wanted to collect the remaining money, which forced them into a long exile.

“We started moving from city to city but they found us every year. They would say, ‘we are going to kill you, we are going to burn you alive’, so we would escape and go somewhere else. I had to start from

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“He had rented some machinery from an oil company and those machines were set on fire. When he went to see what had happened, the guerilla kidnapped him along with his partner and an engineer that had gone with them. According to the guerilla, my husband was paying protection money to the paramilitaries and so they labelled him as a paramilitary collaborator.�

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

zero again every time and when I finally started to make progress, they would find us again”, she remembers sadly.

More than once they felt that the pursuit had ended, but then they would be found again and threatened, forcing them to move once more within Colombia.

One of the cities they passed through was a very tourism-based municipality where they had arrived with the intention of restarting their income-generating activities.

“Since it was hot we started selling water and ice and things started going well for us immediately.

However, we had to register our business so when we did that and opened an account with the bank, the guerrilla noticed and found us. One day my husband arrived in the company truck and told me ‘get out now, they are coming to kill us’. We had to get into the truck with my two children, Valentina (who was around 2) and Jose, as quickly as we could”, she comments.

This situation became more or less routine. The houses they lived in little by little became small museums of their stolen life, with portraits, papers, clothes and accessories. Time and again they were forced to abandon everything.

Finally, her husband decided that it was better for them to separate and disappear for a lengthy period so that they would leave them alone – “Hide here with the children and I’ll go somewhere else so that they don’t put us together”, he told her and left for an unknown destination.

She stayed alone with Jose and Valentina in a small cabin in a rural and secluded zone. They were forced to stay close to the cabin so that they wouldn’t be located. At that time, Valentina fell ill with kidney problems, which required specialist medical care that they were unable to access. Jose, the oldest, was also affected by the pollution that surrounded them as a result of nearby waste water and the strong fertilizers used by rural farmers in the zone.

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“I couldn’t help her, I was practically waiting for her to die. It was terrible (...) The cabin was next to one of those flower nurseries and the pollution there was horrible because there was a broken pipe and that made José Andrés terribly sick. He started getting welts because the air was so polluted but I couldn’t leave there because they were looking for me”, she says.

So Claudia and her two sick children were confined to a small house nearly 3,000 meters above sea level.

She thought that she couldn’t go on and that it was impossible to overcome that situation.

However, she found something that helped them to survive the restrictions on their mobility and the diseases. Claudia started growing flowers and vegetables. This was a time of change for her. She was used to the urban life but had to start supporting herself through her own crops of broccoli, cauliflowers and carrots.

The family were able to successfully overcome this experience that lasted nearly a year. Her husband returned and suggested that they establish themselves permanently in the Colombian capital.

Everything indicated that the FARC wouldn’t look for them anymore. It appeared that they had successfully evaded their pursuers, or maybe they had just tired of chasing them.

So they left for Bogotá to restart their lives and business ventures. Her husband worked as a publicist and Claudia was an editor. They entered the world of books together with her husband’s friend.

Claudia comments that “we agreed to do a giant yearbook for schools with anecdotes and stories.

This deal helped us to improve again economically”.

In a short period of time they had bought an apartment in Bogota and also started another business related to purchasing and selling land. Maybe they opened up to these new opportunities too quickly.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“One day I got a call and they told me ‘your son is on the school bus, going along this street right now.

Write down this account number and deposit the money because if not we will blow the bus up with your son and all the children inside” she remembers.

She didn’t call the police due to the fear of having her phone tapped but she checked it out with the bus and confirmed that a white vehicle was following them. She knew that the threats were true so she did what she was told over phone and after a few anxious days she left her country forever. Her husband stayed in Colombia and they separated years later.

“About two days later I went into shock because they had threatened my children and when someone meddles with your children it hits you very differently. So I got on a plane and came here with the two kids”, she states.

This is what Claudia and her children faced. She never saw her husband again as they could no longer maintain a relationship under so much adversity. She decided that for her children’s safety, and worn out by so much anxiety for so long, she was going to make the effort to rebuild her life in a new country.

Adapting to the New Context The situation was not easy when they arrived to the new country. In Colombia, because of her previous moves from city to city she had completely lost contact with her mother and siblings. Now, nearly ten years have passed since she last heard from them.

However, she came to this new country to start from scratch, with her heart guided by her faith so that she wouldn’t give up in the face of any adversity.

“Here the crisis was different because you don’t even have a mattress to sleep on. When you arrive here and don’t know anyone or even where to go, it’s like jumping out of an airplane. Where do you go?”, she tells.

Without realizing it, life had placed her in a country that she had never imagined coming to and little by little she got involved in more hopeful situations.

She was introduced to RET and since that moment she has been participating with the organization as a member of refugee women’s group. This has helped her to reorganize her thoughts, emotions and ideas.

“We have tried to start a business in this group with empanadas (cornmeal pastries filled with meat and vegetables) and cookies. We meet sometimes just to chat or because RET is going to deliver a talk or training on some issue, etc. I am one of the people that has been involved in almost everything RET offers because they have always been like a guardian angel”.

Her process has been about personal development first, with herself and then relating with other women that faced similar situations to hers. Time and again they refer to the need to heal, to face their fears and to rebuild in order to resume their path. They talk about encouraging their children and maybe contributing to their new community.

“I have been able to heal my wounds with the group and also contribute to the healing of the other women.

One day the girls invited me to give a talk. So I talked from the point of view of fear, ego, suffering, compassion and letting go. When I speak to them I ask questions like: Why do we have an illogical fear of the future?; How does one really let go?; How are we going to earn enough to eat?; and where are we going to live? I speak about that and we talk and we all leave very motivated with a renewed energy”, she asserts.

It has been necessary for Claudia to learn about herself first. This is because her adaptation process begins by believing that she is capable of forging her own destiny and being aware of her strength to overcome the adversities she’s experienced and the present challenges in her life.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“I got divorced three years ago and I am still alive.

My kids are also with me and I am not covered in grey hairs nor am I grumpy. I live a relaxed life because I do what I want and there is a coherence between what I think, do, feel and everything. RET has always been there during these processes because I go and ask them about what I need and they always give me advice”.

In addition to the accompaniment of her reflection process and the opportunity to heal wounds through the psychosocial support group, support is also provided for Claudia’s children who also need their own opportunities to learn, make new friends and restart their own lives.

“They didn’t just help my children with education but also provided psychological support, legal advice, empowerment and investment. RET has helped me in so many areas. Every time I have needed something, like requesting documents from Colombia, school supplies or anything else, RET has always been there”.

Having a safer environment and support in different areas of her life has helped open up new opportunities for her. That is why something unexpected happened recently, her dream came true of talking again with her mother and siblings after a decade.

“I was able to talk to my mom a few days ago. I spent nearly ten years without hearing from my mother and siblings. Just recently we were able to reconnect again thanks to technology”.

Her children are maybe adapting quicker. Jose is 16 years old and starting to go out with his friends.

Valentina is not behind as she has already made some friends at school. Even at 12 she is being invited to hang out with friends. It is difficult for Claudia to let them go. They have lived with tension for a long time and she is always ready for any sign after the death threats that were made.

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“I still tell them to let me know when they get to where they are going. I am a little paranoid. Let me know when you arrive! Where are you? Where are you going? Who are you going with? Valentina has just started going out this year as she is at high school, but I still take her, bring her and check that they’re ok”.

The Integration Process Maybe one of the most important things from her current experience is the way Claudia participates in the different activities she is involved with. She has accepted what happened and is using that experience as a path to look at the present differently.

Opening up to others has helped her to become one of the most vocal members of the women’s group and in this way she is building a path to follow in her new life.

“I was speaking the other day with a group of The

Integration Process

Her strength starts to show in other areas, above all with accepting that she has to develop new skills to help her continue her journey and support her children. This is why she took the food handling course RET offers, with the goal of opening her own business preparing and selling food.

However, her main project is different. She wants to make mini-gardens, as she has the feeling that they could sell very well in her community. She has two objectives with the mini-gardens: for them to become a source of income for community members; and as a therapeutic activity that help people heal their emotional wounds “The three of us can be involved with the mini-gardens. I think it can help distract José Andrés because he loves to plant, he is creative and likes painting. I think this business will help me communicate with

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

my children and bring us closer because Valentina also loves painting houses, dolls, mushrooms and other garden sculptures”.

The FARC, the guerrilla group that damaged her life, are for Claudia just part of a situation that led her to start the second stage of her life:

One could ask how Claudia has achieved her level of emotional stability after having overcome so many adversities. Seeing her smile and caring about her appearance, feeling good about herself and hopeful about the life she has just begun, she transmits her experience of reconciliation to those around her.

“I have no resentment towards the guerilla because that is what they had to do at that time and I wouldn’t be the person I am today if that hadn’t happened. I am not angry at my country, I’m not angry in any way. My heart is completely clean and I can say that I exist”.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

2.Luisa is Reborn From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown Luisa arrived to Central America in 2014 together with her mother and son after fleeing the Colombian armed conflict. Today she is far from Colombia, working in a completely different profession. She is 26 years old and a trained nurse.

They followed through on the threat. A few days later she started getting new calls and messages with photos of her son getting on and off the school bus with terrifying statements: “they said they were going to kill him first”.

She is far away but not alone. Far from the ‘cholado’ (typical fruit salad) and salsa music of Cali, the city where she grew up. She is in the middle of millions of inhabitants, accompanied by her mother, five-yearold son and a street dog she recently adopted. Part of her battle is dealing with the uprooting, the pain of having left so much behind.

Luisa did not have the support of the authorities then. In fact, on more than one occasion the response from police was to to scold her: “We can’t provide every citizen with a police officer!”, they would tell her.

She is still surprised when telling her story. She was walking around a mall in Cali that afternoon: “I had just bought a cellphone and put it in my purse but I was pickpocketed without noticing.

Pickpocketing is when they open your bag without you noticing, reach in and take out your cell phone.

I said to myself, well this is just a normal theft by street thieves” she comments.

Luisa’s case wasn’t “like all the others”. She was alone, without support from the public institutions that were meant to protect her and facing enemies with a criminal background that wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her son, mother, herself or any member of her family. The cellphone robbery appeared to be a premeditated act used by this criminal structure.

She never imagined that losing her phone in a simple robbery would translate into a sudden exile that would change her life.

The photos of her son arrived on a Wednesday and by next Monday she was already in a different country. They landed on foreign soil but they did it together. The “Sultaness of the Valley”, as the city of Cali is known, had been left behind. In just a week, the armed conflict had destroyed their life plans but not their lives. It was time to start again.

“After they robbed my phone, they started calling me, asking for money. I think they had studied me because they knew where I worked, where my son was studying and what my mother did for work”.

They were safe and now they faced a new challenge in adapting. Forced to leave her life, work, home and dreams behind by the circumstances, she opened her eyes up now to a new context.

It was unbelievable to her that through a cellphone, a new one at that, they could find out so much about her life. This made her suspect that they already knew everything. According to her story, and based on the investigations following her report of this crime, she had been targeted by one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in Colombia.

Luisa entered a period of deep depression which completely paralyzed her. Those first moments in a new country passed by without her even leaving the small room where her family had arrived, almost without getting up from the borrowed mattress she had placed on the floor. Her pain was overwhelming.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“The police told me that they had caught one of the thieves so they took me in to make the report.. I went, filed charges but sadly my country did not support me.

The accused man threatened me in front of the judge and told me that I would regret having taken this case to the police for the rest of my life. The prosecutor heard him and didn’t care”.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“At first it was very difficult for my mother to see me so bad. She was even afraid that I might commit suicide or starting using drugs. She cried a lot because I went into a very, very difficult period of depression. So much so that I was taking anti-depressants, which as they say, kept me horribly drugged”.

Adapting to the new context What helped her recover? What got her out of her depression? What generated that first response to get up from that mattress and leave that room? Her family, the knowledge that she couldn’t abandon or ignore her son. She did it for her son who she loves and with the support of her mother. Luisa stood up and started struggling and it has led to results.

Surprisingly, being a refugee gave her an opportunity to rebuild her relationship with her son as in Cali she was frequently distant from him.

“I am closer to my family now. In Cali I was more focused on material things and since I liked my ‘expensive’ lifestyle I focused on work. My son had his nanny and his material things but he didn’t have me as a mother. That is why I said that sometimes things happen in life so that you learn something different. I can thank this country and process for that”, she asserts.

Now Luisa is confronting life head on. An armed group forced her to change her destiny but it never made her lose her visionary spirit. She was put into contact with RET during her recovery process and the organization has provided Luisa with support including psychosocial counseling, food kits and technical and financial accompaniment to launch an income generating activity.

“If I needed psychological support they provided it and they have visited my home to see how I am going, where I live and in what conditions I live in” says Luisa.

At that moment she was working illegally in the new country, running the risk of being seen by a police

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officer, thanks to the heroic support of the owners.

She had previously been cleaning family homes, something she had never imagined doing in Cali.

The Integration Process Several months had passed and the darkest days were behind her. The situation for Luisa, her mother and son had improved. The new country gave them a new opportunity. She discovered that there were good people in this country, just like in her own. This was confirmed the day she obtained the first pieces of furniture and home appliances on credit, without a study of her credit history and most surprising of all, without any legal documentation in the new country.

“I started saving some of the money I earned cleaning in some of the family homes. I was lucky to get some credit in a household appliances store. I say it was a blessing because I spoke with the owner and despite not having any ID or documents he said yes, ‘I will give them to you and you can pay me each month’. I got the kitchen appliances, the refrigerator, another mattress (so we didn’t have to sleep so bunched together on just one mattress), a rice cooker and a blender. He didn’t even charge me interest or anything”.

This is how her hope started to come back and her dreams were awoken. Luisa realized that not everything had been lost and that it was possible to start again. This was essential for her to open up to new opportunities, so that something inside would push her to go a step further.

It was her mother that motivated her go in a new direction with her life by opening a beauty salon.

“Thanks to RET’s Livelihoods support, we create our own business so that we don’t have to depend on anyone. We are there working with RET, we’ve started our business and things are going very well. I wanted to start a snack bar but my mother already had experience training hairdressers and she also knew how to cut hair. I didn’t know anything about that but I decided to start studying and I liked it.

‘Let’s start a beauty salon!’ I told her”.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

In a short period of time Luisa became an expert in painting designs on nails and the beauty salon started well. This entrepreneurship shown by this young woman from Cali and coordination with RET’s team are yielding good results.

Now the beauty salon is also a training academy that trains new hairdressers. Luisa and her mother are rebuilding their lives as they hair and glue on synthetic nails. They employ their approach and creativity on each new nail design for clients and the student’s trained by Luisa’s mother.

“We’ve been working on this project for four months. It was a difficult process because they give you a lot of problems about being a foreigner, but with RET’s help we got our documents and we’ve officially registered our business. We have been growing through word of mouth marketing. My mom also gives talks about hairdressing to students in different places and they pay her with a daily rate. So this has helped us out a lot”, asserts Luisa.

This process has also forced her son to change. He has experienced difficulties in adapting to the new country. He was a victim of bullying in the first school he was enrolled in. Luisa knew she had to quickly stop the abuse and harassment from students and teachers.

RET assumed responsibility for organizing the transfer of her son to another school where he was well received. RET is implementing intensive pedagogical actions in classrooms so that students and teachers understand what it means to be a foreigner and refugee.

“They treated him terribly for being Colombian, and the worst one was the teacher. To be honest, I wasn’t going to go and fight them. I just got my son and put him in a smaller school. Now he is at the new school and I am happier. The teachers, directors and even the cleaning lady are very nice. He has fit in very well and this is an advantage because it motivates him to go to school, study and be happy”.

Luisa looks into the mirrors hanging in the salon and reflects that the universe has conspired in her favor to keep her alive and elegant. She touches up her nails and turns the place into a small catwalk. This is how Luisa reinvents herself every day.

Exile has not taken away the sweetness that is characteristic of the people from Cali. She opens the beauty salon every day. Sometimes she looks at the department of Valle del Cauca and the city of Cali on a map, hoping to someday return. Her mother and son are always at her side. Her son is happily playing, messing around with the street dog that they adopted who also had the opportunity to find a new home.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

3. Beyond feeling Melancholy are Dreams From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown Angie’s story is told in a province of a Spanish speaking country with similar characteristics to the coffee growing regions of Colombia. She is a young person that abandoned her country due to the problems her father had in the armed forces.

Today Angie is 21. She never imagined living with so much uncertainty and even less being outside her homeland and far from her mother.

“My father had problems with the FARC and he had to come here. Since we didn’t live together we thought that it wouldn’t represent a risk for me, but that wasn’t true, and I also had to leave my country.

I came here with my younger brother”.

The parents decided that both siblings had to leave.

They didn’t do entirely explain the situation that led them to make this drastic decision. Angie only knows that during the year she had to flee Colombia, the armed conflict ripped away her possibility of living a happy life, of finishing her secondary education and the dream of studying at university. It was not only difficult for her to understand what happened, but also to accept it.

How is it that a young person finds herself in this situation? After having lived a healthy and safe life, suddenly it is necessary to quickly leave behind the places you know so well, your education and your mother.

“It was very difficult because I was living with my mom and leaving her was the hardest part for me.

She was the main source of support I had. Despite my parents being separated, we’ve always been a very close family. They had a good relationship so

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there weren’t any problems with that. Leaving my family and my brother was the most difficult part to me”.

Angie never received a direct threat nor sensed the danger that was there. Leaving Colombia at first didn’t seem to be a big deal. However, she had to quickly decide what things were essential to take because she wouldn’t be returning home.

This was the beginning of a time in which there were only questions. What was going to happen to her dream of studying dentistry? How would the distance affect the relationship with her mother? Could they stay in contact? What would her life be like in the new country? Would she, her brother and father be safe?

Adapting to the new context.

It was August, the school year was progressing and Angie didn’t have the necessary documents to enroll in any institution in the new country. This made her situation more difficult. In addition to the difficulty of coming to a new place, there was uncertainty, fear and lack of self-esteem due to ‘being no one’, not having a legal identity and the emptiness of having left her friendships and an important part of her family.

“It was at the beginning when I heard about RET. It is an organization that facilitated the negotiations to obtain the documents she needed to enroll in secondary school so that she could quickly access an educational institution. This was important for her adaptation process, but it wasn’t the only thing that we had to get done.”

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“At that moment you think, why me? Why us, if we’re just normal people? We lived in a city like everybody else but suddenly I only had one choice, which was to leave. You arrive here without anything, you don’t know anything, so it is like starting a whole new life”, says Angie.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

During this first stage, it was also essential to educate and raise awareness inside the classrooms on Angie’s situation.

“When I started filling out the documents so I could study, I was already applying for refugee status but they didn’t even know what a refugee was in the school where I was enrolling”.

Being in her situation exposed her to complex situations, not just about being able to enroll in education, but also the difficulties in participating and integrating in her new school environment. Maybe one of the hardest challenges was finding new friends.

“It was very hard because I didn’t talk to or know anyone. Even just going to buy something, there are a lot of differences. There were things I couldn’t find, so that is why I didn’t go out because I didn’t know anything about this place. Settling in at first is very difficult but I started talking to more people and things changed. Here at RET I’ve met some other people that were going through very similar experiences”, she adds.

The relationships she is forming and the spaces where she is establishing herself are helping her to survive the separation from her mother.

“I never lost contact with my mom or my family.

They have always been my support but at a distance. I call them when I can and we talk over the internet. I talk with my mom every day. In fact, we were speaking about this a little bit ago. She tells me: ‘Angie, I learned to live with an emptiness in my life because they took something from me, they took you away from me’. My mom lives alone with my other brother. I am the oldest. So you accept it and give up because nothing can fill the emptiness I feel without my family”, she says.

This is her dilemma, the tension she has been forced to endure between wanting to return and be with her loved ones and starting a new life in the country she is in now. The territory where Angie is currently living is providing opportunities for her to achieve her dreams and she is starting to believe that it is

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possible. Despite being separated by many kilometers, her family is by her side.

“They have been close to me during my time here, even from so far away. My challenge is to study dentistry. I have always had that very clear and I knew that I had to continue with my life, even with everything that I was missing, my family and everything else I left behind. I had to continue because I couldn’t come to a complete stop and not study”, says Angie.

The Integration Process Angie lives with her father, her two siblings and step-mother. Her days now start at four in the morning when she leaves home to start the journey that will take her to the university classrooms she recently entered for the first time. She has achieved one of her most important dreams, studying dentistry.

Working with RET she has been opening up other spaces in the new country. She has learnt how to give talks to other refugee youth and is advancing with her own income generating project of selling milkshakes. This will help Angie support herself while she finishes her studies. Gradually she has become a community multiplier, working with other refugee youth. Slowly but surely she is integrating into life in her new country.

The youth group she is participating in is constantly working to raise awareness regarding the refugee situation and promotes a greater understanding of what her and her friends have experienced. One of the tools she most values is a dynamic game that replicates the refugee experience for people that have con concept of it but always respecting participants’ privacy.

“I use this game on migration as part of my work as a community replicator. I have used it working with the other people in the group. They get to know you and you get to know the it’s like they become a part of you. The game is a different tool and it has been very important for me”.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

The game is something she has taken very seriously because she has been able to heal her wounds through it. It is almost like psychosocial therapy.

“By playing this game I don’t have to tell people what I went through and experienced. The game makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable. They themselves experience what migration and being a refugee is like”.

Angie did not want to leave Colombia but together with her father, younger brother and step mother she is making progress. Enrolling in the university was an important step. It has helped her to discover new opportunities. Now she is starting an income generating initiative.

“I took the food handling course with RET and they have trained us on different things: on how to start a business; and what income and savings are. I started my milkshake business because I didn’t want to stop studying, so instead I complement it. I know both projects have to go hand in hand and it is also going to help me out economically with my own goals”, she adds.

Angie is overcoming every obstacle life puts in her way with all her effort. Now very little depresses her, instead, these obstacles are what most encourage her. She knows that beyond feeling melancholy lie her dreams and that her personal problems can act as a mirror in which other young people can examine

their own lives. She finds courage in these reflections and uses them to help guide dozens of refugees.

“I don’t know how many people are starting this process right now, but I think that there is always something you want to achieve. I think that despite everything, we can’t give up or act negatively in response to the damage that strangers have caused us. You have to get together all your strength and say I can do it!”, she adds.

In ten years, Angie sees herself living happily next to all of her family in Colombia. The tears that used to contrast with her smile, along with her shyness, naivety and bravery, will someday just be memories of a sad time. For now, she is studying and getting on with her life with the milkshake business because she is confident that it will become a successful company.

The Colombian armed conflict forced her out of her country, but without realizing it she arrived to a place that is similar to her own. Coffee is an important agricultural product and a cultural and economic reference here. Although it is not her preferred drink and her milkshakes have different flavors and recipes, Angie continues firmly on her path towards economic autonomy and complete integration in the host country.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

4. Rosa’s New Dress The displacement event that caused the emotional breakdown In Colombia, Rosa was dedicated to business. It is something she learned as a child. Two years ago, she was working in dressmaking. She left her country due to the constant physical, psychological and verbal abuse from her ex-husband. She has lived since then in a South American country together with her 12-year-old daughter, mother, siblings and nephews and nieces.

Today she is 32 years old and in the prime of her life. It is still difficult for her to talk about her marital experience and the moment she closed the door of her home behind her and left, thinking that it would be enough. It wasn’t. She began to be pursued by her ex-husband, attacks and threats found her wherever she was. This is why she was forced to permanently abandon Colombia, taking her daughter with her. Rosa would surely be dead if she hadn’t found the strength to leave.

Rosa became isolated from her family and close relatives as she thought her best protection was to be silent. Maybe she was humiliated by what happened in her home. She didn’t speak about her pain or the violence of her partner for a long time. Maybe she would still be in that situation if it weren’t for her daughter.

Her daughter became more aware of what was happening over the years and her exposure to violence was increasing. This was crucial for Rosa to open up to asking for help from the members of her family.

“The harassment continued after I left home. So I realized that neither my daughter nor myself were safe there. Sadly, I had to start thinking about other options. My family had no idea of what was going on at the time. So I was alone but I told them and that was when I decided to leave Colombia. I left all the material things but I brought my baby, which is the most important and the only thing that really matters, and here we are. (…) I could have left my

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daughter with her father and gone alone but no, I have made these decisions for her. Thinking about her, the future and a much better life for her, that is why I’ve done all this”.

Adapting to the New Context Starting life in another country is not easy. Rosa faced the difficult conditions of being a refugee, like the indefinite waiting period to present her application for refugee status to the authorities, the obstacles in enrolling her daughter in the educational system and her lack of knowledge of the very strange context in the new country that was very different from their own.

“The first problem was the issue with the documents. There were a lot of setbacks. I came with my passport but my daughter did not have a visa because her father never authorized her to leave the country. It was clear that they weren’t going to give me the stamp”, she says.

With the support of some family members she has in the host country and the participation of organizations like RET, Rosa was able to get the required documentation for herself and her daughter. A short time later she successfully enrolled he daughter in a school and felt that maybe things wouldn’t be so difficult after that.

However, the family still had to overcome other obstacles. Rosa and her daughter were forced to deal with the discriminatory attitudes of some locals towards foreigners and biases that persist in some areas against Colombians.

“My daughter was a victim of bullying due to her accent and because she is Colombian. There is a lack of understanding and acceptance by the com-

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“I lived with my daughter’s father for 14 years. We started having problems from the beginning. At first he was verbally aggressive. This was followed by psychological harassment until the physical aggression started. It was everything by the end. Life became chaotic and there were very difficult times.

There are scars not just on my body, but also on my soul”.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

munity here. They sometimes just need to open up their minds and think that someday this could happen to them. Thanks to God I have spoken with my children and motivated them though. I’ve made my heart strong so they don’t have to face things alone”.

Rosa’s fighting spirit helps her to overcome adversity after adversity. Today, for the first time in many years, after having left the hell that her home with her daughter’s father had become, she has started to feel less alone. Her family is supporting her again during this difficult transition.

is really crucial. For example, my daughter started her first year of school and needed school supplies and I didn’t have the amount of money to say to her, ‘let’s go buy your supplies!’ RET helped us to buy the supplies that we needed”.

“It isn’t easy here. When things are economically tight you have to adjust everything: reduce expenditures; and prioritize things; even improvise to earn more money. Thanks to God we have my family’s support, which is the most important thing. It is one of the main reasons that you say: No, I’m staying!”, she says.

“Something very important happens here. The group meetings are held regularly and the fact that you find yourself with other people that have also had difficult experiences, seeing that you are not alone in these groups, that I am not the only one that has gone through this drama and that it wasn’t just me that had a problem with this and had to leave the country. RET has offered us the opportunity to speak and share our feelings, our wishes and our desires”, she says.

Sometimes there are doubts, thoughts of giving up, but it is her hope, which has grown thanks by the support she has received and motivation from her loved ones, that keeps her progressing.

“When I think about returning home and running that risk, I find a hand grabbing me and pushing me forward…”

The Integration Process Thanks to degree to which she has been empowered, Rosa has helped her daughter progress by supporting with her studies. Although this represents an achievement for any refugee in their integration process, it is even more remarkable for a woman that was oppressed by gender based violence for years at the hands of her husband.

“There was a regulation in the school where she was enrolled that gave foreign children the opportunity to equal access to education, even without having local identity documents. RET’s support in this area

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With RET, she also participates in meetings with other refugees to share their experiences and learnings, telling their own stories and recognizing themselves in other people’s stories. This helps them to find strength and heal the wounds left by the displacement. Two years have passed since she left Colombia and Rosa has not felt alone during it.

Despite feeling good about her relationship with her daughter, who is now studying in a musical school and taking violin classes, Rosa has needed psychosocial support to move on from her experience with domestic violence that she endured for so many years. These therapy sessions have helped her recover the life that was held back in Colombia for nearly 14 years. Now she invites other people to have faith.

“The work with the psychologist has been very important. She and all of the team are like family.

They treat you very well, like we’ve known each other our whole lives. Thanks to them, I can adapt better to what is happening. Although it is difficult, I would tell people that you can’t lose your faith and that there are always new opportunities”, she adds.

The outlook is better for Rosa today than it was in Colombia. However, her life is not perfect. She doesn’t have a stable job, which in her own words makes her “technically unemployed”. She works in a

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

small sewing workshop that started with her mother.

Their foot doesn’t leave the sewing pedal because they know that with each garment they are moving forward with their lives.

“RET has supported us economically, me with the sewing and my sister with her cleaning products business. It is something that my whole family is incredibly grateful for. (...) I don’t have a stable job right now but I am sewing here at home. RET gave us a sewing machine and with my mom we are sewing and making garments, whatever we can make.

We also do additional work in order to earn more money and to better support the family”.

Both Rosa and her mother dream of what they can achieve with this family business. They have big plans while they start producing the necessary things to support themselves with needle and thread.

“We started the sewing business as a very humble but also gratifying option that generates income.

Sewing is a family affair. My mother has sewn her entire life. Sometimes it is difficult to get the raw

materials but it doesn’t stop us. If someone comes in needing a dress we take the measurements, make the pattern and sew it. If they want a curtain of course we’ll do it. The client brings the fabric in and we do our thing. We charge for labor, for the work”.

This woman that used to in fear of her partner is today an entrepreneur who never misses a training opportunity. While she is working on the sewing business, Rosa is also studying accounting, another challenge that is not too big for her.

“I dream of having a large scale fashion business that allows me to hire other people and train my staff. I want to help other people in my similar situation that need employment”.

Now Rosa dares to dream and plan her future. She is giving new meaning to her experience of domestic violence experience and it has transformed her, allowing her to rebuild her life alongside her daughter and mother. She is happy. She is no longer afraid.

What she called the ‘wounds in her soul’ have healed.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

5.Stitching a New Life From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown Daniel doesn’t use public transport very much because he prefers to travel around the city on his skateboard. He dreams on each journey, like many young people, of changing the world, despite the fact that his education is still being frustrated by the displacement he was victim of in Colombia.

His father dared to report a case of drug-trafficking in a Colombian region that Daniel prefers not to name. While this case was investigated, strange things started to happen to him and his family. His journey began three years later when it became clear that the family were being persecuted and the death threats were no longer a suspicion but instead had become a harsh reality.

During the first few internal displacements the family were confident that everything would settle down over time. They had gone to the authorities and were requesting witness protection. They would soon be safe. The protection was granted after a year in hiding.

“It was a case dealing with individuals that had been extradited, the heads of the drug cartels. It wasn’t exactly because my father worked with them but he found out about what they were doing. We lived in a very small village where everyone knows each other. Three years after he filed the police report we started fleeing from place to place until they finally put us into witness protection” says Daniel.

However, these measures turned the lives of Daniel and his family into agony. The witness protection program maintained their safety but stripped them of the possibility of carrying out common activities. For example, Daniel couldn’t even go to his industrial design classes and stopped earning extra money working with leather by making jackets, bags and shoes.

“Studying became very complicated because I had a curfew. I had to leave after six in the morning and be in the house by six in the afternoon at latest.

There were classes at nine thirty in the evening, so I couldn’t go”, he comments.

Family spent a little more than a year in this situation in which despite the constant tension, they felt safe. Daniel thought that the worst was over and finally they were taken out of the witness protection program. This meant that they were no longer at risk. Everyone in the family hoped their lives would return to normal.

But it wasn’t to be. Gradually the environment changed again and he started to notice that he was sometimes being followed, someone was watching his movements. Daniel and his family were very exposed to this danger.

Daniel’s father continued to request support from the authorities, searching for ways to protect his family. After talking with different people about the case, someone suggested leaving the country because they thought there might be a plot against his father and that he could be killed.

“They told us that we had to leave the country because our case was very complex and it was very likely that the government itself would kill my father, so the situation had become much more complicated. This was another burden on us, mainly an emotional one” says Daniel.

It was at that moment, when the family realized they wouldn’t be safe anywhere, that they decided to leave Colombia. Tired of the constant changes over the years, and feeling pressured by the time spent in hiding, they decided to seek security and stability in another country.

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“We didn’t have any form of security at that time and we started noticing changes around us, people watching us, following us, watching what my father was doing”.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

Adapting to the New Context.

The trip from Colombia to the new country lasted around a day. The first thing they did was go to the Ministry of Foreign Relations to start the asylum process.

“We arrived and everything happened quickly. The experience we had heard about from everyone was ‘no, being a refugee is very difficult, you have to fill out a lot of papers and lots of other things’. This was nothing like our experience but we had arrived to the country with more information about the process”, he says.

However, Daniel and his family are living a radically different life compared to before. The apparent initial fluidity of the process stopped when it came to obtaining employment. Despite all of their efforts, Daniel’s parents had yet to start earning an income that could support the family. In Colombia they had all of the conditions necessary to achieve their dreams and projects. Daniel would be halfway through his industrial design studies, his father would have a job and his sisters would be going to university without a problem.

“I am a bit more relaxed now because I am outside of Colombia and there is no longer so much direct danger. But if I think about it, this is very difficult because I have two sisters and one of them finished secondary school and wants to start studying medicine. However, this country does not give us the opportunity to help her study because you have to pay for university, even public ones. It isn’t very expensive but there are extra expenses and if there isn’t any work then there isn’t any money either”.

Daniel explains that this tension keeps the family in a constant dilemma: return to Colombia or stay where they are now. Maybe they didn’t imagine the challenges they would face in a new country, maybe they thought they would have the ability to take their case to an international court, but this has not been possible and the obstacles they have to overcome appear larger every day.

This has produced conflicting emotions in Daniel.

Deep down, he wants to stay as “the truth is they’ve given me very good things here, these people have given me a warm welcome”. On the other hand, he recognizes that there are moments of despair and fear in his house.

“This situation forces you to grow up. I am 19 years old and I do not think like a normal 19 year old that goes to parties or is thinking about girls all the time.

I have more important things to think about”, he says.

The family share a very small place to live. When many refugee families arrive they stay in small rooms without furniture. Every day they share their hope while trying to understand the new context they find themselves in. “We continue hoping that justice does really exist”.

It is not unusual to find Daniel sitting in a corner looking worried, thinking about what he can do to support his family. This was how he was when the RET team met him the first time they went to his house and how the staff in charge of livelihoods found him that time his mom confirmed that he could sew. He showed the RET staff a bag that he had produced a few years earlier when he was still in his Colombia.

That afternoon everything started to change for him.

The Integration Process Six months have already passed since Daniel left Colombia with his family. This 19-year-old afro-colombian is an expert in the art of working with leather goods and textiles. Together with other refugee youth he is forging ahead with PEZ, a cooperative income generating initiative dedicated to leather work and textiles.

“I have an income generating process that I recently started. I have more or less four years of experience with stitching and these types of things. Everything

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

started when RET came to my house. It was a very weird situation because they arrived and I was lying on the floor looking like I didn’t want to know anything about the world: - This is what my son does – my mom said (and she showed some of the sewing I had done for a person).

- Hey, I’ve got something for you, you have to come and show me what you do – said a member of the RET team.

- Of course I will – I told him” Daniel joined the X Youth Group, one of the initiatives that is revolutionizing the practice of socializing the rights of refugees in that country. The group is made up of enthusiastic refugees and local citizens that are convinced that when united as a group they can transform the way people think and reduce violence against refugees.

With both PEZ and the X Youth Group, Daniel works on different activities together with other youth.

They are permanently going out on the streets to talk to people, coordinating talks with local authorities, provide information and raise awareness. This network, which the members call a ‘family’, is a true social milestone with concrete achievements in a new and fast-growing process.

“There are a lot of us in the program and I think it has a strong future. I think there is a significant market for it. I dream of being successful soon and really consolidating the X Youth Group as a family so that if someone else arrives, we can adopt them like a little brother or sister and teach them so that our business keeps growing” he excitedly tells.

At only 19 years old and with his studies on hold because of being so far from home, for Daniel, RET was the perfect setting to develop a new way of thinking about life, particularly the socio-cultural networks component. This new point of view is more sensible and doesn´t lose sight of the dreams

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that are so important to a young person Daniel’s age, who early on started to see life as broken, hazardous and exiled.

“The process has been very promising. More or less a month ago I started fully participating and I think it has been a very wonderful process. It has affected me very positively and productively because I am learning a lot”, Daniel comments.

Daniel’s process is uplifting. There is very little left of the young person that came to this country six months ago full of anxiety and serious emotional problems. He has built his new life plan with his own hands and is hoping to turn 20 with his own clothes brand already on the market.

“My brand is going to provide me with enough money to live and study. I am certain of it. I want to study and do something interesting with young people through RET. I am very interested in helping society to understand that refugees and immigrants are simply human beings and have the same rights as everyone else”.

His dreams do not end there. Daniel continues to be interested in contributing to his generation: “I have thought a lot about starting a good Foundation in the future, a Foundation that only works with young people because they are the future of the world”.

He continues to make progress with his integration progress. Daniel has the ability to adapt to the changes and challenges in his path. He knows that life, like stitching leather, requires dedication and patience: “This question of integrating is easy for me. My process of learning how to live in this place is wonderful and it has not been difficult for me. I think that it depends on the person that leaves their country.

You have to leave with good thoughts, be a good person, hope for good things and believe that you deserve good things wherever you are. I also have a lot of friends from different countries. For me this is an opportunity for us to come together as Latin

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

Americans and break through these imaginary lines and borders� he tells.

For the time being, Daniel is enjoying the benefits PEZ has given him as he already obtained his first screen-printing jobs. Riding his skateboard, he shows off some of the bags that are starting to sell much better on the streets.

Every day there are things to do and surely, with RET’s support, his sister will be able to study medicine, his father will resolve the situation that brought them to this country and he will continue to work the pedals of the sewing machine in order to go forward with his new ventures.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

6. We Found Each Other Again From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown Maria Luisa perfectly remembers the day that she left her homeland with her husband and children to save their lives. With only the clothes on their backs, they travelled on a bus along the highway passing through several towns until the sun finally set.

“It was July 16th and one of my husband’s brothers had been murdered. When that happened we thought the same could happen to my husband, so we mainly made the decision out of fear. It was very difficult leaving everything. My children were very young and in third and fourth grade. Although they told us to take things with us, we decided to leave without anything except the clothes we had on”, Maria Luisa comments.

nied by uncertainty, bias and instability, but it also carried the possibility of rebuilding their lives.

Adapting to the new context.

“Arriving was very difficult because Colombians have a very bad reputation here. Some people started getting to know us said ‘No, no, they’re not like others, these are good people and we have to help them!’ We arrived to an army sergeant’s house and they spoke very poorly about Colombians but fortunately the sergeant’s wife was very nice. She rented us a room in her house. She was great to us – it was wonderful. She helped us get our papers” she adds.

They left because it was the only way out to protect their home from the death that was lurking through their region at the time. Colombia was going through a very difficult moment due to drug-trafficking and the control exercised by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) of certain rural areas. The FARC´s armed struggle against the government and its institutions heavily affected the civilian population.

The cozy environment where they arrived helped Maria Luisa to overcome the sadness that exploded inside her during the bus trip that lasted more than 20 hours. She remembers the day she smiled again and was accompanied by her husband once again with hope:

They weren’t after María Luisa and her husband specifically, they didn’t target people or have a list of names. It was random violence, a stray bullet that could hit anyone. Their entire community was at risk. At that time, entire towns became ghost towns.

Hundreds and thousands of people left due to the arbitrary decisions made by people with weapons.

They left everything behind and had to cross their country’s border to save their lives and those of their children.

– “Of course”, I said.

María Luisa and her family finally crossed the border dividing Colombia with a sister nation. This was the beginning of a long journey for them accompa-

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– “Maria, can you help me in the kitchen tomorrow?”, the owner of the house asked me.

– “And if you know how to drive you can go and work on our farm”, the owner then told my husband who was just a few meters away.

Supported by their charisma and the motivation to forge ahead, they won a special place in that house.

“The owner’s wife took us to the farm and we completely earned her trust”, comments Maria Luisa, excited at remembering where her family lived during the most difficult phase immediately after leaving Colombia. “Now when we visit we feel like part of the family” she says.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“I think that things can change but you have to have a lot of faith. At least here I find a peace that doesn’t exist there”.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

After a long period as farm laborers they started in a new direction, tirelessly looking for their own place to live. They travelled through half the country dealing with xenophobia and segregation until they found it. Hearing sentences like, “Ay ay ay, those terrible Colombians!” become routine for her and her family.

“It really affected us at first and well, you just have to start assimilating little by little”, she adds.

María Luisa and her husband faced change and instability. They were tricked into going to a farm where they were subjected to inhumane treatment compared to how they were received in the sergeant’s home.

“My husband worked in construction and I worked the kitchen. I practically spent 18 hours a day cooking food. As if that weren´t enough, I would wake up at six in the morning and go to sleep at nine at night. We couldn’t take it anymore so we left”, she adds.

They moved from city to city adopting the local accent and gaining experiences that helped them relate to locals.

“I worked in houses, restaurants and I started to get over my fear. Thanks to God we’ve had work everywhere we’ve been. Something that they do recognize throughout this country is that Colombians are good workers. Most of all that the women are good cooks and the men are good workers” she says between laughter.

María Luisa and her husband started leaving the bitterness behind but still needed time to completely integrate, as something inside them stopped them from showing all the potential and generosity that characterizes them.

This journey meant that their home life was unstable and they couldn’t access any alternative jobs or business opportunities, and they also couldn’t guarantee the educational security of their children.

They were still afraid and had yet to find how to obtain more stable accommodation. In this area, RET’s support was fundamental for this family.

“Since RET came into our lives they have supported us a lot. At first I was afraid to get involved, but I spoke with my husband and we decided that it was better to talk about what had happened to us. We overcame the trauma and got fully involved with what they were doing”, says Maria Luisa.

RET’s work helped them think about stability and developing a plan that would give the family the possibility of obtaining a stable home, based on a proposed life plan and a daily commitment to work towards achieving it. The psychosocial support, groups and workshops to develop competencies and life skills were vital for this couple.

“People were right when they told us that moving around so much meant that we would never find stability, so we started to get organized. Over time we brought over some family members to where we are living, like my siblings, who already have bought some land to generate income”, she says.

The Integration Process Fortunately, the man who she had built her dreams with was also capable of building a house for her and her children. This accomplishment was extremely important in María Luisa’s life, as despite the adversity of her displacement, a new journey was beginning for her family.

“We bought a small piece of land and little by little my husband started building the rooms until we had built a house. We later sold it and then settled down here, where we live now”, she comments.

‘The Warehouse’ was born in that house, a grocery store with grains, vegetables and fish. The small store started by selling cilantro and chives, a beginning that arose from the motivation that Maria Luisa received from her husband´s friend.

“If you´d like I can bring you cilantro and chives for you to get started – he told me. I said ‘yes’ and started ‘The Warehouse’. This helped us out because we started earning money to buy things and it became our biggest motivation”, she points out.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

Her stabilization process involved more than just organizing the business. Like in hundreds of cases, the family needed to find themselves again and they achieved it with RET’s support. Through the preparations required to establish a life plan, build a business plan and develop life skills and competencies for their income generating initiative, Maria Luisa seems to have found herself once more and knows where her home is.

“The workshops we have received have helped us to find ourselves. When we started to participate in the talks with them, they explained to us that we aren’t alone and that there are a lot of people that have had to come here”.

‘The Warehouse’, like other businesses, currently has to deal with the food shortages that are part of the generalized situation in the country. However, Maria Luisa already has some accounting and marketing skills and is working to circumvent the situation.

“I’ve not really been affected by the shortage. Here at the business we sell plantain, fruits, fish, rice, pasta, snacks, bread, etc. We do have to be careful not to sell too much to people from other places because in my business it is better to save things for the locals. In the case of flour, I sell bulk packages and a trucker comes by asking for five. I can only sell him one”.

Even with the business, María Luisa and her husband were missing something that RET focuses its efforts on. The organization not only helped them to ‘find themselves once more’ - as Maria Luisa calls it - but to also strengthen ‘The Warehouse’ business or the ‘little warehouse’ – the endearing nickname they call it using the Colombian dialect.

“They’ve also helped me study courses on accounting so I can know if I am doing things right or not, as well as courses on how to food handling, water storage and all that. RET has given us all their support”, she says.

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With the income, María Luisa and her husband earn and manage their money so they can build their new home, where they hope to continue with their lives.

“We started by building a little room and now we have another one. Now we are going to see if we can start building a bedroom for our daughter with what we keep earning”, she says.

This Colombian home is stabilizing. The group therapies have helped to strengthen their self-esteem.

María Luisa is a true reflection of this achievement.

She regularly attends community gatherings and has even been a member of a community council and leader, where she encourages people to participate in activities that benefit the region. It is a leadership task promoted with RET’s support in which she has to regularly deal with the ups and downs of politics.

“You try to tell people from the community that we need to prepare and organize ourselves but it is not easy. Politicians have a lot of control here and people sometimes don’t take action because they think that certain people haven’t given them anything”, she says.

And her children? They are both focusing their life on building things. The oldest at 23 is just like his father: he enjoys working with a shovel, trowel, a pot and bricks. Her other child at 22 is about to graduate as a civil engineer. María Luisa keeps dreaming with her feet on the ground: “The ‘little warehouse’ is the most important thing for us. As long as we have it we are going to be selling food. I hope that things return to normal in this country, but in the meantime we are putting whatever we have into the business”.

The time of not trusting people has already passed and her self-esteem has been restored and strengthened. María Luisa has been participating in different activities implemented by RET for nearly two years now.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“I will always be thankful to RET. I always insist that we meet up again. They helped me to lose the fear I had. I also call them anytime something happens and they are always there to support me. They don´t forget about us. They are still here and are a part of our family”.

Now María Luisa and her husband remember July 16th with less sadness, the cloud of dust that they left behind in their wake when their displacement began. They fled 25 years ago to save their lives and have stayed in the host country, which has become their home, to rebuild their lives.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

7.Her Voice Gets Stronger From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown First it was her father. He received direct threats from illegal armed groups and had to leave suddenly without saying goodbye. Later her turn arrived.

The name of Nanlly appeared, like that of many other adolescents, on a list that indicated they would be murdered unless they left the country within 24 hours. Before she turned 18 Nanlly was forced to leave her hometown together with her mother and brother.

“There are illegal armed groups there and they started killing young people. You couldn’t speak out about it, especially if you didn’t agree. They tried to keep people quiet so that no one would say anything. Later they started threatening young people and produced a list on which I appeared and they gave me 24 hours to leave, so I had to go”.

This stopped her regular life. She was becoming a leader in her community. She participated in several groups and committees at her school and never wasted an opportunity to share her opinions to anyone who wanted to listen.

Nanlly, her mother and brother made the decision to leave instantly and gathered a few things to take with them. With anxiety and fear they travelled to a territory that, given it put space between themselves and the group that had threatened Nanlly, felt safe enough. Her father was waiting for them in the new country.

“I remember that when we arrived my father was there to greet us but it wasn’t easy at first because he wasn’t very well organized and didn’t know what to do”.

Nanlly changed. She wasn’t able to or didn´t want to share her opinion anymore, and her thoughts seemed to go into hibernation. There were no groups

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or meetings and her schoolmates and classrooms had been left behind. She has often wanted to go home, despite receiving bad news from her hometown.

“I´ve found out about a few people I knew who had been killed. That hurts me a lot personally, in addition to having to distance myself from the rest of my family”.

All of this made arriving to the new community difficult. She was going to need some time to find her way, understand the context and start developing her ideas and projects again. Nanlly is thankful for the help she has received.

“Thanks to the organizations that support migrants we are living in a neighborhood with other people in the same situation. Thanks to God they provided us with support and we are starting to find our way now”.

Adapting to the New Context Now located in a new community, and certain that she saved her life by leaving Colombia, Nanlly and her family are starting over. The prevailing peace in the host country allows her to think differently and get back the internal strength that has always characterized her.

The place where they are living now is not too different from where she comes from. The streets are still unpaved and the houses have a similar architecture to her hometown. Business moves at a smaller scale and the constant contact with locals and foreigners passing through is slowly motivating her to find new spaces to interact and grow. The most important space for Nanlly is the school.

“I have been doing well at school. Of course you relapse sometimes and your grades suffer because

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

The desire to live better, to show myself that I can do things is why I always put a lot of positive energy into everything I do. All of that motivates me to move forward�.

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nothing is perfect. What is certain is that I prefer to be more relaxed now and focus a bit more on things at school”.

Starting with the basics and prioritizing getting back into school have been key to Nanlly’s adaptation process. School is the context that is progressively helping her access new spaces, the place where she has found her voice again, which had been silenced by the threats made to her life.

Her family has also played a fundamental role. They fled with her to escape the death threats and have been rebuilding their lives together. Amidst uncertainty, her father, mother and brother have always been there for her.

“There are four of us living here and we get along very well. We have arguments sometimes, like in all families, but we do everything possible so that we can overcome our problems through dialogue. Here there is love, no matter what. My grandfather, a few uncles and aunts and my cousins are in Colombia and sometimes I talk with them to see how they are because you still worry that something could happen to them”, she says.

New challenges will surely arise and Nanlly will surely be involved in more actions, because she has always been characterized by her energy and desire to participate. Just as she looks directly into the eyes of people that she speaks with, Nanlly is looking straight down the path she has yet to travel.

The Integration Process Just after gaining stability in her new school, Nanlly joined the youth program that RET promotes and she has been able to go back to pursuing her dreams and leadership. Now she feels comfortable engaging in debates and participating in training provided by the program. The voice that was silenced by a hitlist of names is now dreaming again with freedom and enthusiasm.

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“I like to share a lot with the other young people because it is very fun. It is a bit of a recreational time when you can relax and I like to talk a lot. If I have something to say I say it. Additionally, beyond my RET friends, I also have friends from other communities that are here. I spend time with them and I go out and have fun”.

Sharing with other young people in similar situations to Nanlly has helped with her self-esteem and confidence. Her initial isolation is disappearing as a result of the exchanges and meetings and in its place possibilities for a better life are appearing as Nanlly begins to understand that she can adapt to the new situation and follow her own path.

“I was a bit more reserved, when I arrived or you could say I was very introverted. I thought that my comfort zone was being by myself, alone and isolated. With RET I’ve learned to loosen up and this has helped out me a lot. It has been very enriching at the personal level because I’ve realized that it’s not just me and that there are also a lot of people that have gone through difficult things and have been able to move forward”.

With this renewed faith and energy, Nanlly increases her participation in spaces and is strengthening her leadership step by step. She works with a lot of energy because she doesn’t want to be silenced again.

“We work on projects with people from other provinces, on environmental issues for example. It´s not about trying to cause problems, we just want people to listen to us, that we’re not just invisible wallflowers”, she indicates.

She recently surprised a youth group in the third regional gathering called “Young People Have Something to Say”. This event is organized annually

by RET and convenes youth leaders from several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to share their experiences and vision of the challenges they face, as well as to build joint action plans that can be implemented in their host communities.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

Despite not attending the event personally, Nanlly participated virtually, sharing her ideas and the impact of the actions that she has implemented in her community with other young people. She continues to be involved in this space and others.

“They have taken me to participate in other groups and to show them what we are doing. They are other groups of young leaders from distant provinces. We share our experiences and look at different ways of coexisting and approaching people”.

The magic that comes out of her voice in each meeting, and the commitment she puts into her work have been formed other people from her community that have inspired Nanlly’s personal resurgence.

Her talent would not be the same without them and she knows it: “They are lovely because there is a very good energy with them and when I come they treat me with a lot of trust and affection. If you do well, you feel good about yourself and that energy is contagious and people like that. So they say ‘we

can count on her’ which means that they see you as a way to join the group and feel comfortable’.

Occasionally, she feels a “sweet” nostalgia for her homeland. She remembers the local festivals and traditions. But she doesn’t stop with her work. This also helps her to keep moving forward and continue building her dreams, with her eyes always focused ahead. She sees herself working on issues related to tourism. She tells her friends that “I would like to work with young people or in something else like tourism because it would be interesting to see different places”.

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8.They Became Leaders by Overcoming Obstacless From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown Rodrigo went from managing a farm in Colombia to selling stuffed potatoes and empanadas in a South American country. The FARC threatened him and he was forced to abandon his home, his country and most difficult of all, his wife Julieta and their children.

In the meantime, thousands of miles away, Rodrigo didn’t know where to begin. He was alive but missing half of his life. He didn’t understand how in a question of hours he had become one of the hundreds of thousands of Colombian refugees living in different countries on the continent.

“Unfortunately, they (the FARC) wanted to recruit me as a soldier – ‘No, no, I have my children and my wife’ – I told them. (…) I came here without anything, without clothing, we had to leave quickly. I couldn’t come with my wife at the time because we didn’t have the money”, says Rodrigo.

“It is very difficult to arrive here alone, without anything, not even a place to sleep or anything. We didn’t take anything from the farm so in our case it was very difficult. Being alone is even harder as you are used to having your family, your children and wife being with you. Then you are here and you can´t do anything about it, and there is a risk that maybe the guerrilla are following your family and are going to retaliate against them,” he says.

He came first to a new territory to pave the way for his family. His mission was, once safe, to produce enough money to pay for his wife and children to come and join him. They hadn’t been through anything like this before. They had thought that the peace on the farm where they worked would last forever.

“It was very difficult for me and also for my children because they are very attached to their dad.

Being apart was very difficult. It was the first time we had been separated for so much time”, Julieta comments.

This family was not just affected by the momentary absence of their father but also the difficulties they faced in earning the income they needed to survive without Rodrigo’s support. But Julieta did not just lie down and give up. They were able to survive the wait by supporting themselves through selling produce from their small garden and with the solidarity of others.

“During the time we were separated we had to go and get food in different places because my mother doesn’t have a lot of money either”, says Julieta.

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This was the beginning of their forced exile. Their separation was just another phase in the story they continue to write today. Rodrigo and Julieta have the same objective: to be together again and in a safe place for their children’s wellbeing.

Over the following months, Rodrigo worked as a salesman, a driver, he made and sold street food and even transported condiments in trucks for a local company. Thanks to this sustained effort he was able to get his wife and children out of Colombia.

Adapting to the New Context Being used to working on a farm, Rodrigo knew that each day would bring problems but he never imagined that it would be due to discrimination.

This became one of the most difficult factors in his integration process in the new country.

“When a foreigner arrives somewhere and the local people don’t know him or anything about him, it is incredibly difficult. For example, going to a store as

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“The economic part is important but the psychosocial aspect is more important in order to know how to handle a situation. For example, I used to be a person that despaired about everything. I would get infuriated and yell�.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

a salesman and they say – Look, it’s a Colombian! Be careful he might be a guerilla! All Colombians are bad people! (…) I was immediately discriminated against and that fills you with anger”. This discrimination was evident in other areas of daily life that Rodrigo remembers.

“Looking for a place to rent is also very hard. Just for being Colombian you hear: ‘No, no, I´ve already rented it!’ The same thing happens in public transport. You can see the other people in the line go through, pay and they get on, but with us it was different. Whether it is in a taxi or bus, they carefully examine the bill you pay with, like we are counterfeiting money or something. It is as if they don’t recognize their own money”.

If this social affliction was prominent in the street, it was even stronger in the classrooms. This affected her children and also Julieta.

“The biggest problem we have faced has been discrimination. The children are called guerillas in school and have to stay quiet because they are refugees. We have had to remain silent here because we know that if we have a problem we will always lose out. Since my son is overweight they treat him terribly, they say mean things to him and touch his body”.

Little by little the days full of problems and discrimination started to change. They had a difficult first year, but gradually opportunities started appearing for the couple. RET has supported them over the course of the four years. Rodrigo and Julieta fought one of the toughest battles and they won.

“We´ve had a very rough time but things have now changed and my children are studying. Education here is very difficult. There are a lot of problems.

Just for being Colombian they are against the kids when they enter the schools but things are improving so much, thanks to God”.

She adds, “As you start adjusting to things and getting along with people and the customs here, I think

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that you move forward and start leaving things behind and all that. So you start progressing little by little”.

Rodrigo, even though he hasn´t returned to working as a driver like he did in Colombia, thinks that RET’s support has been decisive in his social inclusion process. Although he is no longer in front of a wheel, he knows how to drive his stuffed potatoes and empanadas business, which is providing him with the necessary income to support his family: “RET has supported us with the issue of entrepreneurship and I think that this has strengthened us economically because now we have a clear vision of what we are going to do. We have received training on sales and developing our products. They have helped us as a couple and with getting our kids into school. They have helped us out so much”.

Julieta also considers the economic aspect important. She highlights the psychosocial support that has helped guarantee their emotional stability amid such complex situations.

RET’s psychosocial support to the family also has helped them improve their self-esteem and relate better with their environment. Like Julieta says: “They have helped us out, mostly with personal issues. Thanks to RET we have integrated ourselves into the community, lost a lot of fear and we are closer as a couple. We understand each other better thanks to the training sessions we have received.

We have changed a lot as a family. The psychosocial and family support that RET provides have changed us a lot. We have learned a lot about how to treat our children and how to teach them a lot of things”.

The Integration Process After overcoming several challenges, the couple understood that life had given them a second opportunity. Seeing their children in school and their dreams intact, Rodrigo and Julieta embarked on taking on new leadership roles. They have acted as a bridge to accompany other refugees in their

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

journey towards stabilization and socio-economic integration.

“Hearing so many things like, ‘get out of the country quickly, we don’t want you here!’, we understood that there wasn’t enough education about refugees. We understood that you have to support others because we also suffered through discrimination, and it still happens today. They don’t treat us well in many parts just because we’re Colombian and the police take advantage of this issue. I don’t think they know what our migratory status means”, comments Julieta.

This is how they have gotten involved in training processes in which Rodrigo and Julieta have acted as examples for other people and have become ambassadors for the rights of other refugees that are going through what they also experienced: “For example, I like to go and help in the schools. I explain to people that there is a place for their kids in the education system, no matter what. I tell them that they have rights and that they can do this and that. If they have a serious problem, RET goes and speaks with them. They are looking out to make sure that we are ok and that the teachers see that despite being Colombians and refugees, children have rights that have to be respected and they can’t be abused” says Julieta with emotion in her voice.

She puts this learning to the test with her own children who are developing values so that they assertively confront the difficulties that result from being a refugee, most of all when they are victims of segregation and school bullying.

Alongside RET, this couple participates in a community leadership program in which both refugees and locals participate in order to promote their rights and establish better social cohesion.

Thanks to this support network, they are now more empowered, understand local legislation and multiply their knowledge of mechanisms and procedures for refugees with other Colombians. They are constantly doing this in their living room where the guests, who are mostly refugees, feel very at

home with Rodrigo and Julieta’s eloquence and friendliness. They offer everyone a hot chocolate, a traditional drink for a Colombian family from the Andean region.

Nowadays, Rodrigo is clear that “we have to move forward, if others have been able to do it then we can too. This helps us to be an example so that what we have done helps other people to organize themselves better”.

He is a hopeful person that enjoys being at home. If he didn’t stop when the FARC forced him out of his country five years ago, he won’t do it now that he is getting ahead.

“I have a lot of challenges now. I would like to take more important courses that help me later on. We have to prepare ourselves everyday more and more.

Through RET we are bringing together people so that we can deliver some courses in order to help them keep improving their lives. We need people to change their way of thinking towards Colombians.

As my wife says: we are not all bad people, we are not all good people, some of us come to work and others don’t. We came to work and do things as well as we can”.

It has been an arduous journey. They are both 31, their oldest child is 13 and the youngest is 9. Rodrigo and Julieta’s projects are still going strong and they are passing them on to the entire community. They don’t just think about themselves.

Julieta wants to study in order to stop selling things on the street and dreams of becoming a Chef.

“I want to study because I don’t want to be making potato chips on the street my whole life. Rodrigo does it because he likes it, and that is what he wants to study. However, I want try and excel at something else. I want to do this and I have to do it for me and the children so that they can see their parents overcome their adversity”.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

9.The Chef of Life From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown Reality gradually forced his family out of Colombia.

First it was his mother with one of his older brothers. There wasn’t enough money for all of them to travel together. They were supporting Jesmar from the host country. Jesmar had enough to support himself month to month but he didn’t know how they did it. Finally, it was his turn to cross the border to reunite with his family.

uncles and aunts; cousins; everything. However, there is also a certain excitement in knowing you are going to a new place and that you are going to find new things. Things are going to change even if you don’t want them to and also there are things that being in another country you can change or improve”.

It was only then that he discovered the deep value of family love, after seeing a part of the life his mother and siblings had led before he arrived.

He gradually learned the important things. Although he did have a lot of difficulties adapting to the currency, he quickly adapted to the country’s musical rhythms thanks to being a musician.

“My mother and siblings sold churros (fried pastries) in the street, directly under the hot sun. This is how, little by little, they brought each of us out, one by one, thank God. I found out about everything. When I arrived here I started trying to figure out what was happening and although she didn’t work doing that anymore, I would see the churro sellers and say: ‘Did my mom work in that? How that possible?, Sweating so much to send me money over there.”

Arriving to the host country was not easy. The new situation becomes a challenge when you know you are permanently staying and it isn’t possible to return to your normal routine.

“It is always hard at first for any foreigner, unless you are on vacation. My family and I came as refugees because we had to leave our own country due to violence”.

Without the possibility of returning, Jesmar lived divided between his desire to return and the drive to explore the new life in front of him. Uncertainty, nostalgia and desire to keep moving forward, he felt all of these emotions bubbled up inside him.

“I had conflicting emotions leaving everything behind that I had built since I was a kid: friendships; family;

Adapting to the New Context

“The hardest thing was learning to pay. I didn’t know how to pay with coins. At first I arrived home with my pockets full of coins because I always paid with bills since I was afraid of making a mistake. It went a lot easier for me with the music because I am also a musician”.

The challenges kept coming. Two months into the school year, Jesmar faced the problem almost all refugees face: gaining access to the formal education system. Despite all his best efforts, the good student who got the best grades in Colombia, he couldn’t enroll in schools with regular schedules so he chose a night school in order to not lose a year.

“I arrived a month after classes had started here and I couldn’t find a place available for me in school.

My parents wanted me to go to a good school. My mother always wanted the best school for me. It doesn´t matter if it is a public school, she just wanted a good school. I was always a good student, got good grades. But they just couldn’t find a space for me. I had to start in a night school”.

His life clock started once more at zero. But he wasn’t in a rush; he just wanted to keep moving forward, together with his family.

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“I have always looked for a way to enjoy my work so I would even wash the manager’s and the Chef’s cars at the restaurant. I would do anything to earn goodwill and of course a bit more money. I do anything to improve myself”.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

In order to pay for school, Jesmar worked in construction and hotels without being legally old enough to do it. He was driven by his strong conviction to help support his family, who were facing a difficult economic situation as a result of being refugees.

I was washing dishes in the restaurant she worked in. They were the only ones that knew about it. I did well. I worked there with a spoon and a glass of water next to the sink so when plates arrived to the kitchen with food scraps on them, I ate”.

“No one ever knew that I was a minor. I worked hard there and studied at nights to try and get ahead in order to improve my situation and also help my family”.

He did whatever he could there to earn the trust and friendship of the people he met.

But it wasn’t just with work, his ideas also started to change. A certain level of maturity developed in his life: “I don’t know if you could call it maturity because I already wanted to work, I wanted to have my things and to get out. I wanted to do everything I couldn’t do in my country”.

The Integration Process The armed conflict cut short his dream but life gave him another. He lives a normal life in Central America where he lives as a refugee.

“In the end you end up becoming what you had least imagined. However, today I give thanks to God for my life, health and work (…) This country has received me well, with the ups and downs that always appear, the traditions and culture, everything changes. It is not just a question of getting used to it but adapting, and it depends on if the person wants to adapt. You can’t expect a country to change to how you are used to doing things, because that is going to be impossible. It is better to accept and know how to handle things that are different, to accept reality”.

He went from construction to working as a dishwasher in the kitchen of a restaurant. Even though he had already been granted refugee status, he didn’t have a work permit. Fortunately, the owner helped him, as well as one of his sisters that sometimes worked as a waitress at the restaurant. He spent nearly a year and a half in this job.

“When the building was finished they got rid of me but my sister talked the Chef into helping me out,

“I have always looked for a way to enjoy my work so I would even wash the manager’s and the Chef’s cars at the restaurant. I would do anything to earn goodwill and of course a bit more money. I do anything to improve myself”.

Jesmar never stopped moving forward and always showed up for work until one day an opportunity arose that allowed him to start his biggest adventure. The one he had never imagined would come, which today means he can have a dignified life: “Due to a problem they fired three kitchen hands. I arrived the next day to work just like normal and the Chef told me: ‘you are going to work in the kitchen’, and he passed me one of the three uniforms he had in a bag. This is how I started out in the profession I have now, working in a kitchen as first cook”.

Since then Jesmar has been climbing the ladder that he built himself, rung by rung, with conviction and love for his family.

“The Chef really helped me out and taught me everything. I even got two different jobs because he recommended me in different places and that is how I started accumulating work experience and learning things in the kitchen. Every kitchen is a different world. Working in different kitchens you learn more things, different ways of doing things”.

He adds excitedly, “later I went from assistant to cook in one of the city´s prestigious hotels. I had a lot of other opportunities in different hotels where I was the right hand man to the Chef, the Sous Chef, the co-pilot, the person with the most responsibility in the biggest kitchens”.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

He has achieved all of this without a gastronomy degree. Jesmar got a degree in life, and wherever he goes he has his apron close by and a kitchen full of tools to prepare incredible recipes.

“I always have a contact wherever I go, thank God. I call and they are never going to say no or they are at least going to help me or recommend me. That is how I started working here”.

Today all of his family has been granted refugee status. Even with the bitter taste the displacement and his refugee status has left, he prefers to taste his new life in which he has been able to fully enjoy his citizenship.

“Half of my family are already permanent residents here and we already went through that difficult process of renewing the refugee card. It was also very difficult to open up a bank account and get a driver’s license, which took more than a year”.

Throughout this process, RET has supported Jesmar and his family. From the start of the school year, which marked a difficult moment in his life, to supporting his entrepreneurial projects. For this reason he feels that “the relationship is really excellent” and adds, “I arrived and they were always looking after us and my family.

Later with school they also helped me a lot with school supplies, other things, shopping for Christmas, etc.”

Jesmar’s work with this organization that has opened up the possibilities for him to get involved with the arts and take advantage of his free time. The young Chef talks about how this has helped him carry out an integrated and successful process.

“They never say no whenever I need help. They deliver training and do theater and I am always there”, he tells.

Outside the kitchen, Jesmar and his oldest sister participate in a youth group called EACAJ (Artistic and Cultural Evolution for Adolescents and Youth). They take part in camps, workshops, training sessions and even entrepreneurial projects.

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“My sister and I have been in this process with RET for the longest and the projects have made progress. I proposed a music workshop and another one on fruit. I know how to cut fruits for sale and make beautiful trays for selling fruit salads and things like that. I learned that in the kitchen and doing my own research”.

The results of these workshops highlight the participants’ creative capacity, not just Jesmar’s, but also that of the young people who have gone through similar situations and want to improve their lives and contribute something if they are given the opportunity. This young Chef and musician is willing to share what he has learnt and done.

“I have given them some tips on food handling. A lot of them have told me that they want to learn to play guitar, so I told them that I am going to teach them. There are some others that rap, five in total.

We have made a rap song with a chorus that is also completely written by them, by our group. We composed everything from the music to the lyrics, all by us, with the guys who rap”.

Like most refugees Jesmar wants to return to Colombia but he knows his future, which he thinks little about, is linked to his new country.

“I am happy. Despite the difficulties and everything I have found happiness and although the change in my life was difficult at first and it hurt me, in the end it has been good”.

He always has words of encouragement for other refugees and invites them to not give up and put effort into what they do.

“You have to find the enjoyment in things. You have to see the good side of things and not the bad. I left Colombia and I am here because I had to, because I had no other choice…Not seeing it this way but looking at it as another opportunity that God has given me, to live my life and change things, do things differently. This depends on you”, he concludes.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

Jesmar has learned to live with his feet on the ground while keeping his dreams alive. Destiny has combined the ingredients that have allowed him to become a true Chef of life.

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

10. Dreams that Come True From the event that caused the displacement to the emotional breakdown There are many children, adolescents and youth that one day leave their homes with no explanation. They leave dolls and toys behind, as well as friends and games to be played. One day they wake up and their lives have changed. They are victims of war.

was showing them another way of living that didn’t involve the conflict, they reacted and gave us 15 days to leave town”.

Some join the ranks of illegal armed groups and others wake up displaced in shelters. Mayra, only 16 years old, along with half of her adolescence spent dealing with difficulties, opened her eyes after a long trip and found herself in a different city to her hometown, living with different people and new voices.

Mayra reflects on her father’s initiatives and thinks they were correct. This is part of the inner strengthen that motivates her to be the youth leader she is today. She is different from the moody girl that didn’t know how to adjust to a new place and took months to adapt to it:

“We lived in a very hot neighborhood and I got sick.

We started from scratch. We had to share a bed here and at home we had our own rooms. It was very difficult. But my parents have always been very strong and they taught us that you have to fight a lot for what you want”, she says.

“In a way I was a rebel and I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to leave our town, but suddenly my father said ‘let’s go, we have to leave everything. There are four of us so all four had to leave. There is no more time.

The time is now”.

When she asked for an explanation about why she was far from home her parents couldn’t tell her. The reasons were absurd and inconceivable. Her father, trying to give young people the option of not being a part of the armed conflict, was threatened with death by the FARC and forced to leave with his family, without any possibility of returning. It didn’t matter that Mayra was just a month from finishing secondary school, the sentence was clear.

“There were between six and seven deaths a day in my town. Where we lived the young men didn’t have any other choice but to either enlist in the military or join the guerilla. So my father started to grow as an entrepreneur and he was motivated to form young leaders, teach them to weld and encourage them to follow their dreams of studying or going to university.

He would tell them, ‘you can be a doctor or an architect’. But when the guerilla found out that my father

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Adapting to the new context

She continues with a simple reflection: “Arriving to a new city, new cultures, new food and new ways of thinking was not easy. I used to think that I wasn’t from here and that my soul was from somewhere else. I called my grandparents a lot to ask them to come and save me”.

In the middle of her adolescence she had to leave a part of her life behind, such as her friends and their excursions. Life conditions were different in this new country.

“So you are used to being in your country and your town and you start going out with your friends and you have a set routine and then suddenly everything changes. Maybe when you get to another country you want to do the same things but you are in a different city”.

The emotional impact on Mayra was significant. She kept to herself during that initial period in the host

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

““I have to learn to live with the memories, the good times I spent with them, everything we experienced together and all the good things. I leave the bad things behind and know that my life has changed. I have new goals and new people�.

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country, a self-imposed isolation of sadness and silence. She reached dangerous limits as the isolation started to affect her health and her body.

“Someone mentioned to me that there was an organization called RET. I approached them and found support. I realized that it wasn’t just me and my family, but many more people and some were going through even worse situations than mine”.

Understanding that she wasn’t alone and that her situation wasn’t unique caused her to change her way of thinking and attitude. It was very fortunate and this adolescent became more aware and gained a more mature perspective on her existence.

“I realized that I was in denial and had to open my eyes. I was sick. A cloud was hanging over me. I didn’t eat and I spent all my time sitting down thinking. They were afraid that I might commit suicide and I thought that if I stopped existing everything would be easier.

When I accepted that I needed support, RET provided me with psychological assistance. The staff became my friends. That is how I started to interact and get to know new people”.

Connecting herself to her present reality was part of this process: engaging in dialogue, participating in gatherings and progressively involving herself in activities with other youth helped Mayra find herself.

“The support you need to get out of something like that, well basically you already have that inside. I started to read a lot, focus and look at another world beyond my telephone and the social networks. So I decided to put the phone to one side because it wasn’t doing me any good”.

She had the support of other young people during this process, both refugees and locals, who became a type of ‘second family’ for Mayra and taught her to move forward with her life. As she says, “it’s important not just to grow in material and professional terms, but also as people; understanding that sometimes life changes and you go around in circles sometimes, but

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you still have to be standing up to be ready to receive everything that comes”.

At the same time Mayra was leaving her self-imposed isolation, her parents reorganized their lives little by little and things returned to normal, not just economically but spiritually as well.

“It was very difficult for my father at first. He worked in restaurants without being paid and did an infinite number other things until he could adjust and earn an income for his work. My parents got their work permits and looked for options and found them. Now we are much better off economically and emotionally because there were a lot of conflicts in the family before as a result of my rebelliousness”, she says.

She remembers then that she had finished high school, and even though she couldn’t participate in the graduation ceremony with her school friends nor the accompanying celebration, Mayra did have the sufficient knowledge and qualifications to enroll in university.

“They asked for our certifications but when we left we didn’t have time for anything. So we called some family members to get help get the certificates and finally we could resolve it. During this process I had the support of several organizations and I was able to turn in most of the required documents to the university and then we were able to sign an agreement so that I could study her”.

Despite her return to life, Mayra misses her homeland.

Even with her parents and sister close by, she constantly thinks about her aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents. For now, she has learned to live with the memories and maintain her relationships with her family back in Colombia.

Unlike many other young people that are refugees, Mayra lives with her parents and sister. They provide her with emotional support that help her confront challenges in her life.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

“My family have supported me to overcome these difficulties because sometimes you think you are very strong but I also have my depressed moments and vulnerable days when I feel very bad and I say that I want to give everything up and leave everything behind. I know that I am here for something. I’ve not given up on life, there is God and that inner strength help me to reflect that we are here and we have to begin to fight for what what we want”, she says.

The Integration Process The young people that support Mayra are the same young people that accompany her today in the activities that she participates in. Mayra was able to integrate and get back to living the life of a normal young person that she left behind when she moved to the host country against her wishes.

“Now we are a group of young people that have a good time, we get together, have regional and national meetings and we always try to be united and meet up”.

Today there are nearly 40 young people participating in the group. They give their best effort and receive training in different areas as part of an integrated approach.

“They train us as leaders and deliver training in English and tons of other things. There are leaders here and people that like art, painting and music but they don’t’ know how to use what they have.

That is why we don’t give up and we always do our best. We meet on Saturdays to plan what we are going to do over the course of the week, creating a vision, mission and objectives. We are going to start making candy and ice cream. Our friends buy the stuff we make so we have that support that is always there for us. We can always find it and it is a support that we are providing ourselves”.

On several occasions she has taken over the leadership of the group, which is rotated regularly. She has also represented her group in different meetings and

activities designed to help refugee youth in this host country to have a voice, share their challenges and concerns, make proposals and drive changes. This way the young people also learn the value of solidarity as they support and teach each other.

“If we have a training session and someone can’t go then I go in body but everyone goes in spirit.

I share everything I learn with them and the same thing happens when someone is sick and can’t go to a meeting. The person who goes updates everyone else. That is how we support each other to keep advancing together”.

They group has a slogan: “We are refugees but we are also here to contribute something to the country”. Their work is based on this belief. Everyone, just like Mayra, has gone through an emotional support process so that they can feel like they belong to society and resist all forms of discrimination. There are now 40 members of the group and they want more young people to join every day, both refugees and locals. They know that together they can contribute to the country.

“There are a lot of activities that we are planning. Not just working with people and refugee youth but with people from this country who can cooperate with us, help us, contribute with their presence and always be there. We work with the organization but we are also thinking about working with universities, schools, etc.”

Meanwhile, Mayra also supports other refugees or people from her country that aren’t members of the group and are going through similar situations to what she experienced nearly two years ago.

“Some people in Colombia call me and ask me to explain to them what it is like to be a refugee just like there are people that are internally displaced moving from city to city and they don’t know what to do, so I speak to them and teach them what to do. I tell them that there are both negative and positive aspects but we are going to focus on the positive, which is much bigger than the negative side of things”.

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Mayra’s life has changed. Today she is a woman full of new dreams, committed along with other young people that live in the same situation to peacefully and constructively respond to adversity resulting from forced displacement. Her leadership skills have been developed within the youth group that RET has accompanied for several years. She finds strength in the collective commitment that inspires the young people that form part of her group.

finish studying medicine and work with vulnerable Colombian young people to show them that there are alternatives to help overcome the adversity.

“When I arrived to RET it was a significant change.

It was like returning to my previous life. I got back everything that is useful to me and left the bad things behind. I started to take advantage of my capacities as a leader and my artistic talent, and I began to understand that I have capacities and can help other people that come here because they might have to go through the same thing I did”.

Mayra forced herself to leave one day. Today she decides to stay of her own free will. The opportunities that war denied her are being provided to her in a foreign country. What was destroyed has helped her to build a new life in the host country. She is 17 and has a full life ahead of her:

Her heart still beats for Colombia but her hands are contributing to this country. Her dreams remain intact. The war did not destroy them. She wants to

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“I have learned something really beautiful. My dream is to be a professional. I want to help the young people here, in this conflict, support them and show them that they can fight for what they want and that they can also do it”.

“I am in this country for better opportunities. They are opportunities that maybe I didn’t have in my home country. Everything that has happened to me has driven me to strive a little harder because I have a dream and it is going to come true”.

Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

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EPILOGUE These stories are an example of the inexhaustible strength of human beings. They talk about resurgence and the storytellers’ determination to not give up. They show that in the worst circumstances the best can come out of each person, their drive to overcome difficulties, their solidarity with others.

We still have a lot to learn about the way resilience materializes in contexts affected by conflict and fragility. The theoretical development of this concept has led it to be recognized as a capacity that is produced in relation to the environment and others. It is an asset that appears through a complex framework of relationships involving internal (capacities, ideas, emotions, life trajectory) and external (people, organizations, context) factors. As a result resilience has to be identified where a person lives and developed, among families – understood in the broadest sense of the term – peer groups and in the community.

RET International makes its contribution in the practice, promotion and implementation of individual, family and collective strategies and the generation or facilitation of protective factors that end up becoming real resilience mechanisms. This is what these stories mainly reflect, a process of rebuilding and giving new individual meaning to the experience, and to always live connected to reality, framed within a specific context.

The spiral of resilience continues to be weaved among refugee youth and families in Latin American and the Caribbean. Not just with them, but also thanks to them, with these beneficiaries going from willing to receive assistance, then being accompanied and supported to participate and finally leading to empowerment. RET’s integrated and systemic approach in the region generates the necessary conditions for this resurgence, achieved through facing and incorporating the past to heal wounds and confront the future, with the goal of not just supporting and contributing to the individual but also to the host community.

For participants in RET’s work, this involves overcoming the emotional and psychosocial impact of forced displacement, having faced violence and death, confronting a new context, the uncertainty of strange and unknown things, having the strength to rebuild their lives, getting things back on track with personal and family plans, overcoming discrimination barriers, achieving access to the educational system, receiving training in new areas, recognizing their own value and developing or expanding their own capacities and skills to support themselves in order to find employment or implement an income generating initiative. All of this is part of a broad process that RET promotes, implements and

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Stories that Move and Resist. A Journey towards Resilience

accompanies on a daily basis in the contexts where the organization has a presence.

When a person that has participated in RET’s programs is willing to share their life experience and help create these stories, it is clear evidence of the relevance of the professional work of everyone who participates in RET’s teams in the field.

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Finally, resilience as a practice, as a way of resisting, of developing adaptability, creativity and the capacity to continue living a dignified life are what humanity´s destiny depends on, to transform current conflicts into opportunities and to build a path towards reconciliation and peace for all.