A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.
- 2012 Peace Fellowships
- 2012 Peace Fellows
- Past Fellows
- Peace Fellows 2011
- Peace Fellows 2010
- Peace Fellows 2009
- Peace Fellows 2008
- Peace Fellows 2007
- Summer Interns 2006
- Summer Interns 2005
- Anne Finnan and the Collective Campaign for Peace (COCAP)
- Carrie Hasselback and Afghan Women’s Network (AWN)
- Chiara Zerunian and BOSFAM
- Eun Ha Kim and Refugee Law Project (RLP)
- Ewa Sobczynska and TAMPEP
- Jessica Smedstad and the Women's Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON)
- Karen Adler and Butterflies
- MacKenzie Frady and BOSFAM
- Malia Mayson and the Women's Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON)
- Margaret Swink and the Dzeno Association
- Nitzan Goldberger and Alternative Information Center (AIC)
- Paula and Rights Action
- Sabri Ben-Achour and the Forum of Srebrenica NGOs
- Sarosh Syed and the Home for Human Rights (HHR)
- Shirin Sahani and the Omid Learning Center
- Stephanie Salazar and eHomemakers
- Summer Interns 2004
- Summer Interns 2003
- Feedback from Fellows
- Frequently Asked Questions About Peace Fellowships
- Fellows in the Media
- Blogging for Peace
- Training and Security
The Impact of Service
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Paula and Rights Action
During her participation in The Advocacy Project’s 2005 Summer Internship Program, Paula was placed with ADIVIMA, a partner of Rights Action in Rabinal, Guatemala.
Formerly Guatemala Partners, Rights Action supports human rights projects in Chiapas, Honduras, and Guatemala. The organization was formed in 1983 and provides funding for regional efforts relating to development, human rights, and humanitarian relief. Rights Action also educates the North American public about globalization and human rights issues and seeks to remedy endemic poverty, repression and racism through cooperation with international partners.
ADIVIMA serves a network of indigenous communities that suffered from massacres in the Guatemalan region of Rabinal in 1982. Survivors formed the community organization to campaign for reparations and to pursue legal action against the people responsible for the massacres. They have uncovered mass graves and brought prosecutions against some of the killers, as well as pressuring Guatemalan authorities to provide them with new farmland. ADIVIMA also actively works to support the education and economic development of survivors and their families in the region. Though much remains to be done, this campaign has turned Rio Negro into a source of inspiration for other Guatemalan communities victimized by violence in the 1980s. It has also attracted intense support outside the country.
Indigenous women in Guatemala.
Most of Paula’s work centered on providing support for the Coordinadora de las Comunidades Afectadas por la Construcción de la Hidroeléctrica Chixoy (COCAHICH), a program operated by ADIVIMA to document the damages sustained by communities as a result of the large Chixoy Dam project funded by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, as well as exposing cases where fair compensation has been withheld from people affected by the project. Paula helped design rules and regulations which will govern the future activities and structure of COCAHICH and increase its ability to negotiate effectively during anticipated talks with the Guatemalan government.
Paula also assisted in gathering information from nearby communities and drafting a report recording the adverse impact on communities below the dam. Additionally, she did some proposal writing and acted as a translator when needed.
While in Rabinal, Paula reported on her experience in the form of online blogs. Her detailed entries chronicle the exhumation of mass graves, an arduous trek she took to visit a community devastated by the construction of the Chixoy Dam, and the lack of basic necessities available to many of Guatemalans struggling to survive.