The GAP project
Our community health worker team
My name is José Diaz, I'm from the community of Huanana. The reason I am in this project is because I am the leader of my community, and a volunteer to work in what the organisation DB Peru refers to as gender equality. I have the pleasure to work with this organisation and to look for change in our families for the community. I noticed violence in my community many years ago. Then, I tried to talk to the community to try and reduce the violence - some of them paid attention to me, some of them didn't. But now I have noticed deep change in the community because of this project: the people are very excited and cheerful, saying "now there is a leader in Huanana that is going to take care of us and protect us." My most profound desire is to take this project and help other families. I hope the project will continue giving us support: I have never seen interest from professors or academic, but now I see it from your part, and I am thankful.
My name is Julio Hector Bancho Tello, I am from the community of San Juan de Floresta, and I am a leader of this project. I am a community health agent and my role in the community is comprehensive: to support people, mostly women who have been mistreated, physically, morally and psychologically abused. I ahve seen violence since I joined the community many years ago. I started to see it between women and men, they got drunk, they drunk 2 or 3 days, and they started fighting. There are still a few families who like to drink, but we are trying to deal with this, create dialogue and trying to make them understand - because they have to be parents for this children, and their children get scared when they see violence. As part of this project, I am going to face up to machista men, I am going to empathise with him and get in his shoes, and help him understand. I hope by the end of this year the project will be a success, and that there will be better understanding between couples.
My name is Iraida Sala Tuanama, and I have been the promotora of San Alejandro for 11 years. I want to be a part of the project because I see a lot of women being physically and psychologically mistreated. There are a lot of women here that say "you are only for the kitchen." But I tell them that women can also have opinions because we have the same rights and responsibilities and we need to learn how to defend ourselves. My role as the leader of the violence project is not easy, but we can do it because for me, being a promotora and facing this project is a lot of hard work. I hope to prevent violence; I wish that, for every problem out there, I can talk to them, they can listen and put it into practice.
My name is Jaime Perez Rivera. I'm from the community Primero de Enero, I've been the promotor there for 30 years. I want to be part of the project in which we are going to prevent violence in each home, to decrease the number of cases, so that there will be no house with verbal or physical aggression. Before this project we never had a direct conversation about violence, so that the aggressor kept continuing, kept mistreating his wife. I would like more training; this is one of the objectives I would like to accomplish, to bring education and information, and provide more knowledge to my community.
My name is Hernan Perez Inuma and I've been working as a community health agent in Irlanda for 18 years. I want to be part of this project to learn. Now, with the gender violence project, we are becoming aware that it is very good to teach our communities to put an end to it. I want the project to progress, especially for the children, so that they can grow up with a healthy way of thinking. Not with the violence that they've witnessed before, but when things change they are going to grown with a different mindset. We do this project voluntarily, with all of our heart, because we want a change for our community.
My name is Carlos Lavy and I live in the community of LIDA. I'm the community health agent. My dream and hope is to serve the community and to help people, I'm very interested in health - the community here is in need and it is my job to help. I've seen many cases of violence, especially when I went to school. Since then, I always had the notion that violence effects us significantly as persons, as families. This project makes me feel excited, because I'm interested in education and knowing more about gender violence. Gender violence takes many forms, and if we can identify the risk factors for gender violence and educate our communities about them, we can prevent it happening.
My name is Felipe Ahuanri Shahuano, I'm from the Juventud Yarina community, I've been a promotor for 20 years. My task as the leader of this violence prevention project is to encourage the community more, and to learn more during these team meetings, to continue improving. I would like to go more in-depth during our violence training sessions to get more knowledge, to prevent violence , and to have a happy life in the community. Us, as leaders, we need to get to the root of violence.
Duglas Rio Vaca, Suca Sari
Junior Bancho Tello, Llachapa
Community health workers are at the heart of our project. Volunteer leaders from eight Lower Napo River communities are working alongside members of DB Peru and UCL to develop the project.
Hear from each of them about why they are leading gender violence prevention, below.