Mission Statement

Woman in prison with her child.

To encourage the development of vulnerable communities, especially children and women deprived of their freedom, through the strengthening of human and social capital. This is achieved by generating development projects which promote a positive construction of subjectivity originating from a respect for differences and the affirmation of singularity so that everyone can assert him/herself and be a protagonist of his/her own life using his/her own resources. We promote the design and implementation of projects which can be seen as valid strategies for the formulation of public policies and in this way achieve the sustainability of transformation processes in the medium and long terms. Our aim is to redefine the objectives of human work using criteria other than output and profit exclusively.

Background and History

The Tierraviva project was born at the end of 2001 on the initiative of a group of professionals and artists interested in social issues. The first activity they realized together as a group was the implementation of the International Child Development Programme (ICDP) in Tigre district in the province of Buenos Aires. The main motivation to begin this work was the deep economic and social crisis, which began in Argentina at the end of 2001, and which brought about endless strategies devised by the affected communities in order to resolve the problems generated by the crisis. Another motivation was the joining of artistic programmes with human development strategies in order to awaken creativity and create favourable conditions for vulnerable communities to find their own answers to their own problems.

We have been working in the community in cooperation with regional projects and NGOs, such as with El Abrojo of Montevideo, Uruguay, and Celuan of Santo Angelo, Brazil from 2001 until 2004. From 2005 up to the present, we have concentrated our work on prisons where mothers live with their children.

Beneficiaries and Participants

The training team working in the prisons 2008.

From 2001 to 2004, we carried out community projects linked to children at risk, mainly in marginalised neighbourhoods in peripheral zones in cities of all sizes (Tigre in Argentina, El Borro in Uruguay, Barrio Sul 201 in Santo Angelo, Río Grande do Sul, Brazil). From 2005 to 2008 we focussed on children growing up in prisons with their mothers, through delivering workshops in art, awareness-raising and education through play in Ezeiza prison’s Unit 31 in Buenos Aires. In 2007, the Attorney General’s Office (Procuración Penitenciaria de la Nación) and the National Civil Servants’ Union (U.P.C.N.) became interested in getting involved in our activities in order to develop a programme to train regional teams in provinces where there are prisons with children. Thus in 2008 we began to replicate the Art and Awareness workshops in the federal penitentiary Units 22 of Jujuy and 23 of Salta in north-western Argentina.

Activities

2001	ICDP implementation in Don Torcuato-Tigre (facilitation)
2002	ICDP implementation in Torcuato and Rincón de Milberg- Tigre (training local facilitators)
2003	ICDP implementation in Uruguay with El Abrojo
2004	Workshops with grassroots organisations in Rincón de Milberg (Tigre)
2005-08	“Art and Awareness of the mother-child relationship in prison” Unit 31 Ezeiza prison
2008	Added the replication of this programme with the Attorney General’s Office and the UPCN in Jujuy’s Unit 22 and Salta’s Unit 23.

Partnership Organisations

2002-2003: In Uruguay: El Abrojo (NGO), INAME (National Institute of Minors), UNICEF Uruguay, Programa Nuestros Niños (Our Children Programme of Montevideo’s Municipal Administration), Programa de Vinculación (linking programme of the International Migration Organisation and the Foreign Relations Ministry), the Uruguayan Consulate in Argentina.

2001-2004 Argentina, Tigre: Rincón de Milberg Health Centre, the Tigre Community Centre, the Nuestra Señora de Luján Church, the Red Cross of Don Torcuato, the Tigre Rotary Club, UNICEF Argentina.
2005-2008: Susila Dharma USA, Canada and France, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, the Attorney General’s Office, the National Civil Servants’ Union, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Provincial Penitentiary Service of Jujuy, the Jujuy section of the UPCN.

Achievements and Successful Experiences

From 2001 to 2004: cooperation with ICDP allowed this programme to become known in Argentina and Uruguay, and we promoted exchanges with the project in Brazil. In Argentina we were the first to put ICDP into practice on a community level.

Painting by one of the incarcerated women.

From 2005 to 2008: helping mothers with children in prison resulted in the training of inmates as facilitators whom we intend to involve in 2009 in preventive health projects outside the prison. The training was appropriated by the Attorney General’s Office who replicated it in other federal prisons. This experience earned us an invitation by the National Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría General de la Nación) and UNICEF Argentina to participate as exponents in the “1st National Conference on the situation of pregnant women and women with children in prison” in October 2008.



Contact
Tierraviva Civil Association
Rasjid Cesar
rasjidcesar@gmail.com

Tierraviva Annual Report 2009