The Cali River needs healing and a group of women from various groups that defend gender equality will meet tomorrow to say: “Women weave our territory. We are rivers, we are basin”.
This is the message given by Nancy Faride Arias, Virginia Casasfranco, Dora Chamorro and Liliana Pardo, as well as other members of the Women’s Social Movement.
“We women say it is necessary to turn the map of the city and look at it from west to east, from where the rivers are born in the Farallones to the Cauca River, where they flow,” says Arias.
(Also read: A woman was injured with a machete in her arms for robbing her in the Valley)
“We say what challenges us and moves us to meet around the basins, because the basins are comprehensive, nurturing, inclusive,” adds the activist.
“The waters contain what is seen and what is not seen: surface water or rivers and also groundwater, the soil that generates food, evaporated water, the water that makes up 80 percent of our bodies, trees that give shade and protect the rivers, the stones that slow down the passage of water and allow more life to be found in the rivers”.
For this reason, this Sunday the first meeting of rural and urban women’s organizations from the water territories and the feminist and sexual diversity gathering will take place to talk about their daily lives, their adversities, how they live with the pandemic and exclusion. The appointment will be in the central park Río Cali, from 9 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. There will be Norma Bermúdez, and Adalgiza Charria.
(Also: Emergency due to floods in the south and southeast of Cali)
“The same basin has been cared for by the women of the townships, who, just as women give life and should not be victims of death, comments Liliana Pardo.
Although the Gender Observatory of the Government of the Valley (Ogen), reported 17 femicides between January 1 and December 31, 2021 with a reduction of 45 percent compared to 2020, the call of the groups against no More deaths or violence. ‘Violet Cali’ and ‘Vibra mujer’
Casa Matria, supported by the Mayor’s Office, also has programming for women this Sunday and on Monday with ‘Cali is painted purple’. On Sunday there will be a bicycle ride in the Jairo Varela square.
(You may be interested in: Cloromiro, the savior of the child who fell into the Cauca River with his mother)
Until this Sunday, the ‘Vibra Mujer Fair’ will be held at the La Estación shopping center, a space dedicated to the visibility and empowerment of businesswomen and entrepreneurs from Cali.
Last Sunday, February 13, officials from the Regional Hospital of San Gil, Santander, informed the Police about the admission of a woman with polytrauma, several open wounds with a short sharp weapon and a blunt object in different parts of the body.
Investigators from the UBIC San Gil Criminal Investigation Section carried out field activities to learn about the event in detail.
(You may be interested: Moving gym club video in tribute to Nickol Valentina)
The investigators interviewed the victim’s partner, who “stated that he would have arrived at the house that morning, finding his wife lying on the floor, arguing that the events would have arisen from stealing it in his place of residence, but that only at dawn would he have noticed the injuries she had and that was when he decided that he should transfer her to the care center,” they said from the Police.
However, the investigations of the experts, “allowed to find and collect sufficient evidentiary elements, such as interviews, Judicial inspection of security cameras and sworn statement of a witness to the facts, managing to distort what was stated by the husband of the victim and establishing that this person was the intellectual and material author of the events”.
(Also: He had hidden 8,500 million pesos in gold bullion in a tire)
The victim was guarded and watched by this subject, who also did not allow him to talk to anyone, arguing that they could hurt him.
For this reason, the victim during the five days he was hospitalized was always afraid to report the facts, confirmed from the Police.
The 27-year-old man was captured and charged with attempted femicide.
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Cesar Luis Melgarejo Aponte
Maria Fernanda Arbelaez
Oswaldo Rocha
The Association of women victims of the district of Puerto Franco, Sucre, is made up of 10 women who are dedicated to the task of fishing.
Oswaldo Rocha
Ingris Morales, Crucesita Isabel Morales Prasca and Martha Morales, prepare the cast net to start another task in the swamp, which is bathed by the San Jorge and Magdalena rivers.
Oswaldo Rocha
The cast net is three meters wide and has approximately three pounds of lead, the corregimiento has 5000 inhabitants.
Oswaldo Rocha
As a result of a night of fishing, more than 600 old fish can be caught in one task. With the products of the swamp, bingos are held where the prizes are the different species of fish.
Oswaldo Rocha
Every year the swamp dries up and in order to get the fish they have to go to others that are much further away, it takes approximately six hours walking, round trip.
Oswaldo Rocha
Martha Morales is the president of the Association of Women Victims of the Puerto Franco corregimiento. Her older brother taught her to fish and sometimes accompanies her husband who is also a fisherman.
Oswaldo Rocha
The women get up very early to collect the trammel net, before preparing a good pot of coffee which is distributed among those who make up the commission that leaves for the swamp.
Oswaldo Rocha
The inhabitants of this corregimiento are hospitable and very friendly people, as well as being humble. Food is distributed when someone is missing or barters are made.
Oswaldo Rocha
The women who fish make the nets that they throw into the waters of the swamp that is washed by the San Jorge and Magdalena rivers.
Oswaldo Rocha
Ordinance No. 007 establishes the week of women and gender equity and the day of rural women in Sucre, on March 4. This was approved by the Departmental Assembly of Sucre and sanctioned by the governor, Hecto Olimpo Espinosa Oliver.
Within the framework of the Women’s Week and gender equity in that department.
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The young mother had behaved erratically for months, hitchhiking and wandering naked through two Native American reservations and a small town clustered along Northern California’s rugged Lost Coast.
But things escalated when Emmilee Risling was charged with arson for igniting a fire in a cemetery. Her family hoped the case would force her into mental health and addiction services. Instead, she was released over the pleas of loved ones and a tribal police chief.
The 33-year-old college graduate — an accomplished traditional dancer with ancestry from three area tribes — was last seen soon after, walking across a bridge near a place marked End of Road, a far corner of the Yurok Reservation where the rutted pavement dissolves into thick woods.
In this aerial image taken from a drone, a pedestrian walks near End of Road on Jan. 19, 2022, where Emmilee Risling was last seen before going missing in October 2021, in Klamath, Calif.
Her disappearance is one of five instances in the past 18 months where Indigenous women have gone missing or been killed in this isolated expanse of Pacific coastline between San Francisco and Oregon, a region where the Yurok, Hupa, Karuk, Tolowa and Wiyot people have coexisted for millennia. Two other women died from what authorities say were overdoses despite relatives’ questions about severe bruises.
The crisis has spurred the Yurok Tribe to issue an emergency declaration and brought increased urgency to efforts to build California’s first database of such cases and regain sovereignty over key services.
“I came to this issue as both a researcher and a learner, but just in this last year, I knew three of the women who have gone missing or were murdered — and we shared so much in common,” said Blythe George, a Yurok tribal member who consults on a project documenting the problem. “You can’t help but see yourself in those people.”
Yurok Tribal Police Chief Greg O’Rourke visits the last confirmed location on Jan. 19, 2022, where Emmilee Risling was seen before going missing in October 2021, in Klamath, Calif.
The recent cases spotlight an epidemic that is difficult to quantify but has long disproportionately plagued Native Americans.
A 2021 report by a government watchdog found the true number of missing and murdered Indigenous women is unknown due to reporting problems, distrust of law enforcement and jurisdictional conflicts. But Native women face murder rates almost three times those of white women overall — and up to 10 times the national average in certain locations, according to a 2021 summary of the existing research by the National Congress of American Indians. More than 80% have experienced violence.
In this area peppered with illegal marijuana farms and defined by wilderness, almost everyone knows someone who has vanished.
Missing person posters flutter from gas station doors and road signs. Even the tribal police chief isn’t untouched: He took in the daughter of one missing woman, and Emmilee — an enrolled Hoopa Valley tribal member with Yurok and Karuk blood — babysat his children.
In California alone, the Yurok Tribe and the Sovereign Bodies Institute, an Indigenous-run research and advocacy group, uncovered 18 cases of missing or slain Native American women in roughly the past year — a number they consider a vast undercount. An estimated 62% of those cases are not listed in state or federal databases for missing persons.
Hupa citizen Brandice Davis attended school with the daughters of a woman who disappeared in 1991 and now has daughters of her own, ages 9 and 13.
“Here, we’re all related, in a sense,” she said of the place where many families are connected by marriage or community ties.
She cautions her daughters about what it means to be female, Native American and growing up on a reservation: “You’re a statistic. But we have to keep going. We have to show people we’re still here.”
Maile Kane, 13, walks with her grandmother’s dog, Charlie, outside her family’s home on Jan. 20, 2022, in Hoopa, Calif. The girl’s mother, Brandice Davis, said she grew up with Emmilee Risling and worries about the safety of her own daughters.
Like countless cases involving Indigenous women, Emmilee’s disappearance has gotten no attention from the outside world.
But many here see in her story the ugly intersection of generations of trauma inflicted on Native Americans by their white colonizers, the marginalization of Native peoples and tribal law enforcement’s lack of authority over many crimes committed on their land.
Virtually all of the area’s Indigenous residents, including Emmilee, have ancestors who were shipped to boarding schools as children and forced to give up their language and culture as part of a federal assimilation campaign. Further back, Yurok people spent years away from home as indentured servants for colonizers, said Judge Abby Abinanti, the tribe’s chief judge.
The trauma caused by those removals echoes among the Yurok in the form of drug abuse and domestic violence, which trickles down to the youth, she said. About 110 Yurok children are in foster care.
“You say, ‘OK, how did we get to this situation where we’re losing our children?'” said Abinanti. “There were big gaps in knowledge, including parenting, and generationally those play out.”
An analysis of cases by the Yurok and Sovereign Bodies found most of the region’s missing women had either been in foster care themselves or had children taken from them by the state. An analysis of jail bookings also showed Yurok citizens in the two-county region are 11 times more likely to go to jail in a given year — and half those arrested are female, usually for low-level crimes. That’s an arrest rate for Yurok women roughly five times the rate of female incarcerations nationwide, said George, the University of California, Merced sociologist consulting with the tribe.
The Yurok run a tribal wellness court for addiction and operate one of the country’s only state-certified tribal domestic violence perpetrator programs. They also recently hired a tribal prosecutor, another step toward building an Indigenous justice system that would ultimately handle all but the most serious felonies.
The Yurok also are working to reclaim supervision over foster care and hope to transfer their first foster family from state court within months, said Jessica Carter, the Yurok Tribal Court director. A tribal-run guardianship court follows another 50 children who live with relatives.
The long-term plan — mostly funded by grants — is a massive undertaking that will take years to accomplish, but the Yurok see regaining sovereignty over these systems as the only way to end the cycle of loss that’s taken the greatest toll on their women.
“If we are successful, we can use that as a gift to other tribes to say, ‘Here’s the steps we took,'” said Rosemary Deck, the newly hired tribal prosecutor. “‘You can take this as a blueprint and assert your own sovereignty.'”
Mary Risling looks at dancing regalia that had been used by her missing sister Emmilee Risling at their family home on Jan. 21, 2022, in McKinleyville, Calif.
Emmilee was born into a prominent Native family, and a bright future beckoned.
Starting at a young age, she was groomed to one day lead the intricate dances that knit the modern-day people to generations of tradition nearly broken by colonization. Her family, a “dance family,” has the rare distinction of owning enough regalia that it can outfit the brush, jump and flower dances without borrowing a single piece.
At 15, Emmilee paraded down the National Mall with other tribal members at the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. The Washington Post published a front-page photo of her in a Karuk dress of dried bear grass, a woven basket cap and a white leather sash adorned with Pileated woodpecker scalps.
In this 2014 photo provided by Gary Risling, Emmilee Risling, right, poses after her graduation from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore., with her great-aunt and adoptive grandmother Viola Risling-Ryerson.
The straight-A student earned a scholarship to the University of Oregon, where she helped lead a prominent Native students’ group. Her success, however, was darkened by the first sign of trouble: an abusive relationship with a Native man whom, her mother believes, she felt she could save through her positive influence.
Later, Emmilee dated another man, became pregnant and returned home to have the baby before finishing her degree.
She then worked with disadvantaged Native families and eventually got accepted into a master’s program. She helped coach her son’s T-ball team and signed him up for swim lessons.
But over time, her family says, they noticed changes.
Emmilee was uncharacteristically tardy for work and grew more combative. She often dropped off her son with family, and she fell in with another abusive boyfriend. Her son was removed from her care when he was 5; a girl born in 2020 was taken away as a newborn as Emmilee’s behavior deteriorated.
Her parents remain bewildered by her rapid decline and think she developed a mental illness — possibly postpartum psychosis — compounded by drugs and the trauma of domestic abuse. At first, she would see a doctor or therapist at her family’s insistence but eventually rebuffed all help.
In this Dec. 2020, photo provided by Mary Risling, missing woman Emmilee Risling is seen holding her infant daughter at a home in California. The 33-year-old college graduate with ancestry from three tribes was last seen more than four months ago on the
After her daughter’s birth, Emmilee spiraled rapidly, “like a light switched,” and she began to let go of the Native identity that had been her defining force, said her sister, Mary.
“That was her life, and when you let that go, when you don’t have your kids … what are you?” she said.
In the months before she vanished, Emmilee was frequently seen walking naked in public, talking to herself. She was picked up many times by sheriff’s deputies and tribal police but never charged.
The only in-patient psychiatric facility within 300 miles (480 kilometers) was always too full to admit her. Once, she was taken to the emergency room and fled barefoot in her hospital gown.
“People tended to look the other way. They didn’t really help her. In less than 24 hours, she was just back on the street, literally on the street,” said Judy Risling, her mother. “There were just no services for her.”
In September, Emmilee was arrested after she was found dancing around a small fire in the Hoopa Valley Reservation cemetery.
Then-Hoopa Valley Tribal Police Chief Bob Kane appeared in a Humboldt County court by video and explained her repeated police contacts and mental health problems. Emmilee mumbled during the hearing then shouted out that she didn’t set the fire.
She was released with an order to appear again in 12 days after her public defender argued she had no criminal convictions and the court couldn’t hold her on the basis of her mental health.
Then, Emmilee disappeared.
“We had predicted that something like this may … happen in the future,” said Kane. “And you know, now we’re here.”
If Emmilee fell through the cracks before she went missing, she has become even more invisible in her absence.
One of the biggest hurdles in Indian Country once a woman is reported missing is unraveling a confusing jumble of federal, state, local and tribal agencies that must coordinate. Poor communication and oversights can result in overlooked evidence or delayed investigations.
The problem is more acute in rural regions like the one where Emmilee disappeared, said Abigail Echo-Hawk, citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and director of the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle.
“Particularly in reservations and in village areas, there is a maze of jurisdictions, of policies, of procedures of who investigates what,” she said.
Moreover, many cases aren’t logged in federal missing persons databases, and medical examiners sometimes misclassify Native women as white or Asian, said Gretta Goodwin, of the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s homeland security and justice team.
Recent efforts at the state and federal level seek to address what advocates say have been decades of neglect regarding missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Former President Donald Trump signed a bill that required federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement agencies to create or update their protocols for handling such cases. And in November, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to set up guidelines between the federal government and tribal police that would help track, solve and prevent crimes against all Native Americans.
A number of states, including California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona, are also taking on the crisis with greater funding to tribes, studies of the problem or proposals to create Amber Alert-style notifications.
Emmilee’s case illustrates some of the challenges. She was a citizen of the Hoopa Valley Tribe and was arrested on its reservation, but she is presumed missing on the neighboring Yurok Tribe’s reservation.
The Yurok police are in charge of the missing persons probe, but the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office will decide when to declare the case cold, which could trigger federal help.
The remote terrain where Emmilee was last seen — two hours from the nearest town — created hurdles common on reservations.
A dog walks along End of Road on Jan. 19, 2022, where police received and investigated reports of Emmilee Risling staying before her disappearance in October 2021, on the Yurok Reservation, Calif.
Law enforcement determined there wasn’t enough information to launch a formal search and rescue operation in such a vast, mountainous area. The Yurok police opted to forgo their own search because of liability concerns and a lack of training, said Yurok Tribal Police Chief Greg O’Rourke.
Instead, Yurok and Hoopa Valley police and sheriff’s deputies plied the rain-swollen Klamath River by boat and drove back roads.
Emmilee’s father, Gary Risling, says the sheriff’s office failed to act on anonymous tips, was slow to follow up on possible sightings and focused more resources on other missing person’s cases, including a wayward hunter and a kayaker lost at sea.
“I don’t want to seem like I’m picking on them, but that effort is sure not put forward when it becomes a missing Indian woman,” he said.
Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal declined interview requests, saying the Yurok are in charge and there are no signs of foul play. O’Rourke said the tips aren’t enough for a search warrant and there’s nothing further the tribal police can do.
The police chief, who knew Emmilee well, says his work is frequently stymied by a broader system that discounts tribal sovereignty.
“The role of police is protect the vulnerable. As tribal police, we’re doing that in a system that’s broken,” he said. “I think that is the reason that Native women get all but dismissed.”
Emmilee’s family, meanwhile, is struggling to shield her children, now 10 and almost 2, from the trauma of their mother’s disappearance — trauma they worry could trigger another generational cycle of loss.
The boy has been having nightmares and recently spoke everyone’s worst fear.
“It’s real difficult when you deal with the grandkids, and the grandkid says, ‘Grandpa, can you take me down the river and can we look for my mama?’ What do you tell him? ‘We’re looking, we’re looking every day,'” said Gary Risling, choking back tears.
“And then he says, ‘What happens if we can’t find her?'”
U.S. women soccer players reached a landmark agreement with the sport’s American governing body to end a six-year legal battle over equal pay, a deal in which they are promised $24 million plus bonuses that match those of the men.
The U.S. Soccer Federation and the women announced a deal Tuesday that will have players split $22 million, about one-third of what they had sought in damages. The USSF also agreed to establish a fund with $2 million to benefit the players in their post-soccer careers and charitable efforts aimed at growing the sport for women.
The USSF committed to providing an equal rate of pay for the women’s and men’s national teams — including World Cup bonuses — subject to collective bargaining agreements with the unions that separately represent the women and men.
“For our generation, knowing that we’re going to leave the game in an exponentially better place than when we found it is everything,” 36-year-old midfielder Megan Rapinoe said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “That’s what it’s all about because, to be honest, there is no justice in all of this if we don’t make sure it never happens again.”
FILE – United States Soccer Women’s National Team member Megan Rapinoe speaks during an event to mark Equal Pay Day in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus, March 24, 2021.
The settlement was a victory for the players, who sparked fans to chant “Equal Pay!” when they won their second straight title in France in 2019. And it was a success for USSF President Cindy Parlow Cone, a former player who became head of the federation in March 2020.
Cone replaced Carlos Cordeiro, who quit after the federation made a legal filing that claimed women had less physical ability and responsibility than male counterparts.
“This is just one step towards rebuilding the relationship with the women’s team. I think this is a great accomplishment and I’m excited about the future and working together with them,” Cone said. “Now we can shift the focus to other things, most importantly, growing the game at all levels and increasing opportunities for girls and women.”
U.S. women have won four World Cups since the program’s start in 1985, while the men haven’t reached a semifinal since 1930.
FILE – US players celebrate with the trophy after the France 2019 Women’s World Cup football final match between USA and the Netherlands, July 7, 2019, at the Lyon Stadium in Lyon, central-eastern France.
Five American stars led by Morgan and Rapinoe began the challenge with a complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2016. Women sued three years later, seeking damages under the federal Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The sides settled the working conditions portion in December 2020, dealing with issues such as charter flights, accommodations and playing surfaces. They were scheduled to argue on March 7 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an attempt to reinstate the equal pay portion thrown out by a U.S. District Court.
“The settlement announced today is an important step in righting the many wrongs of the past,” the union for the women’s team said in a statement.
While a labor contract remains to be reached and ratified to replace the deal that expires March 31, the settlement was an enormous step.
“It’s so gratifying to feel like we can start to mend a relationship with U.S. Soccer that has been severed for so many years because of the discrimination that we faced,” said Morgan, a 32-year-old forward. “To finally get to this moment feels like we can almost sigh a breath of relief.”
Players were able to put off the legal distractions to continue on-field success.
“The additional hours and stress and outside pressures and discriminations we face, I mean sometimes you think why the hell was I born a female?” Morgan posed. “And then sometimes you think how incredible is it to be able to fight for something that you actually believe in and stand alongside these women. … There was something more than stepping on the field and wanting to be a starter or wanting to score goals or wanting to win or wanting to have the glory.”
The $22 million will be split into individual amounts proposed by the players, subject to the District Court’s approval.
Cone said the federation’s method of equalizing World Cup bonuses is yet to be determined. The federation has until now based bonuses on payments from FIFA, which earmarked $400 million for the 2018 men’s tournament, including $38 million to champion France, and $30 million for the 2019 women’s tournament, including $4 million to the champion U.S.
American men have been playing under the terms of a CBA that expired in December 2018.
Rapinoe was critical of both Cordeiro and his predecessor, Sunil Gulati, who headed the USSF from 2006-18. Cordeiro is seeking to regain the job from Cone when the USSF National Council meets on March 5 to vote on a four-year term.
“The thing that Cindy did was acknowledge the wrongdoing and apologize for the wrongdoing,” Rapinoe said. “It was well within Sunil’s ability to not discriminate and to pay us fairly and equally. It was well within Carlos’ ability to do that, and they made choices not to. … I think Cindy has shown a lot of strength in that, and I think the other two, frankly, just showed a ton of weakness and showed really their true colors in allowing this to happen for so long.”
Leidy Viviana Mantilla comes from Saravena (Arauca) with bags and hats that twenty female heads of household have woven with recycled bags. Ancestral embroidery that decants the patience of crochet and cross stitch that reached refinement with the plastic bags that these women recover from everyday garbage. Unique pieces of Colombian crafts that were exhibited at the Exportable Crafts Fair (Farex) this January 2022 in Cartagena. Embroidery forged in suspense at dawn of assault and uncertainty or sleepless nights, after days and nights of armed conflict in the region. They, like the women of Mampuján (Bolívar), weave memory to heal the wounds of war.
Unique pieces of Colombian crafts that were exhibited at the Exportable Crafts Fair (Farex) this January 2022.
Photo:
Luis Eduardo Herran – El Universal.
Through the conversation with Leidy Viviana, I enter the patio and the house of Dolly Dolores Rivera, who that same bright January morning knits in Saravena, but yearns to get to know Cartagena de Indias, a city she has only seen on postcards or on television. She sometimes dreams of seeing the sea. Leidy Viviana is surprised to see how her embroidery touched the hearts of Cartagena and attendees at the international fair. From the solitude of the light of Saravena, Dolly, whose real name is Dolores de Socorro Rivera Pulgarín, says that when she began to weave, the people who saw her told her: “Weaving bags with garbage bags? She is wasting her time!” Her bags, flowers, earrings, hats and landscapes achieve a beauty out of grace and the patience of his hands, with the same light with which the yellows that bloom in Saravena explode.
(Enter the special: United Colombia, where differences can live).
In position 119 of the Cartagena de Indias fair, the name with which Leidy Viviana baptized her work and artistic endeavor is surprising: Maraka, and explains that it is a word that in the Muisca language has several meanings: Ma is mother earth. Ara are the guardian birds of the tongue on earth, the parrots. Aka is the kingdom of the celestial. Maraka or capachos is a good luck charm, it is bliss, but every word is the conjunction and harmony between heaven and earth. These twenty women, some young, mothers who are heads of households and elderly women, are also joined by young people from the region who want to follow the path of weaving and people with motor disabilities. There are deaf people who, thanks to this group, learned to read lips and weave.
Maraka was born in 2014. The recycling store closed during the pandemic, but its obstinate and exemplary work did not cease. Wilson Mantilla, father of Leidy Viviana, is from Santander and met Omaira Mendoza, a llanera, as a hospital porter. The two tireless entrepreneurs are surprised that their daughter has positioned the region with an art derived from recycling. “My parents used to laugh when they saw me encourage and promote women weavers. They thought I had gone crazy, but I fulfilled the wishes of my grandmothers, Dolly and countless women from my land. Rufino Mantilla, Leidy’s grandfather, opened the route to Arauca from Santander. A key woman is Dolly Rivera, who, at 80 years old, weaves with the same passion in the living room and workshop of her house, under the light of the yellow flower of the plain.
Leidy Viviana Mantilla has been a finalist twice for the Green Award in Latin America.
Photo:
Luis Eduardo Herran – El Universal.
After living experiences of orphanhood and destabilization, Leidy Viviana undertook a journey through Peru and Chile and crossed the cardinal points of hope and loneliness until she felt the call of her land. She then found, at last, the light in her own village, together with her family and the legion of women weavers. Seeds in exchange for bags. This is how this brave woman participated with Maraka in the World Entrepreneurship Forum and in the circular economy meeting, in Récord Colombia in 2021. It has been a finalist twice for the Green Award in Latin America. Her intervention on how to promote entrepreneurship through women and her experiences of how to give new uses to waste are lessons for the future that show results in a department that does not heal its wounds from the war. He goes around his town and everywhere, handing out trees and seeds in exchange for garbage bags. In Cartagena, she went to the Bazurto Market to buy guacals, and was petrified when she saw the sick pelicans eating carrion together with the buzzards. “I have traveled through Latin America and I have never seen a similar problem of contamination like the one I have seen in the middle of the Cartagena de Indias market,” she says with moist eyes. “It is a very sad image of a city as beautiful as this.” Leidy Viviana has been surprised because everyone who came to her position at Farex asked her to stand up to meet someone from Saravena, Arauca. They have embarked on a long journey to show what a group of women is capable of creating to change the ill-advised course of war and social and human misunderstandings.
Taking young women out of the armed conflict in the Pacific region is not an easy task. This is an area of the country where opportunities for study and personal development for young people are scarce and where talent is exploited by illegal actors.
For this reason, the work of Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno in the city of Quibdó makes her efforts to build peace even more meritorious, because despite so much difficulty has managed to build a path to overcome obstacles not only for her, but for a group of girls and adolescents from her region.
(Enter the special: United Colombia, where differences can live)
For her, the construction of peace must go from speeches to deeds in order for it to become a reality. They are perhaps her great optimism and, as she herself says “her perrenque of her” of her, what has led her to empower herself and seek a better future for “her girls of her” of her.
With her wide smile, she has managed to conquer many community goals of which she is proud and her pupils even more so.
Why robotics?
This young woman, who is about to finish her law degree, approached the recently created Robotics School in her city, Quibdó, three years ago. She there she realized that girls’ participation was minimal and, in the cases in which it did occur, it was not prolonged and did not meet goals.
When she inquired about the reasons, she learned that something more worrying was added to the stigma of women against science and technology: the high rates of violence that took place against young people in the region.
With her project she seeks to end the stigma that girls and women should not do science.
Photo:
Courtesy Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno
“I trust in my territory and in its women, in the power of the Pacific, the potential of the Chocoanas, their brawl that allows them to overcome difficulties. Women with empowerment through science, technology, resorting to conflict resolution and overcoming difficulties in other ways from the development of skills and abilities in women”.
(You may be interested: ‘Unpaid professional practices are a form of exploitation’).
And that’s when he decided to rely on the skills he got from robotics school and make it a tool to help.
“The department of Chocó has many territorial, social, cultural and historical stigmas and it has been very difficult to face that society that places limits and geographical, social and economic barriers. I never imagined that robotics school would provide those tools, but I didn’t think either. go further and reach the point of transforming my territory from science and technology”, recognized Cruz Helena.
Teaching science and technology and getting inspirational to target girls was a great building lesson in the region.
During school: one of the groups of girls who went through their Robotics School program.
Photo:
Courtesy Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno
“The robotics program made it possible to defeat that stigma that women are not good for science and technology. Gender stigmas that limited their intellectual and economic capacities”.
There are already 300 women who have approached innovation and, with science and technology, have created solutions to overcome problems in their communities throughout the Pacific.
There are already 300 women who have approached innovation and, with science and technology, have created solutions to overcome problems in their communities
“In each version of Innovation Girl it has been confirmed that women are the future of Colombia, but they also inspire a new generation of women in the territory and that is my purpose in life. I feel very proud of that. My role has been the empowerment of womenr in science and technology”, highlights Helena.
Inspire
For this reason, she is certain that programs like Innovation Girl will last for a long time and is sure that it will transcend Chocó, which is where it takes place in each edition.
This laboratory of entrepreneurship through science and technology will surely reach the entire country and Latin America.
For now, he will go, in addition to his department, to Cauca and Nariño. The only obstacle is overcoming the stigmas women facepeople of color and the inhabitants of the abandoned territories.
(Further: ‘I hope to see a revolution of Islam led by women.’)
“The gender issue has a very great historical burden. The fight has been hard to have territorial and cultural rights. Therefore, science and technology will make it possible to close these social gaps. With this we bet on obtaining opportunities and building peace”, says Cruz Helena with certainty, for whom spaces like Innovation Girl can lead to landing opportunities for women entrepreneurs who are just looking for an opportunity, for someone to listen to them.
Cruz Helena highlights the name of the country in all its international participations.
Photo:
Courtesy Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno
“For every 10 ventures there are 7 led by women and I have a lot of faith in the push of them for whom nothing has been great. Many people who bet on their power make me think that a more equitable country is closer.”
That is why, with her convincing smile, she insists on that message to the girls and young women of the country. Whenever she can, she gives words of motivation: “There is nothing that is too big for us, nothing that cannot be fulfilled. Dreams are to be fulfilled science and technology will help make life much easier and close the social problems in our territories. There will always be a space for us in science and technology”.
(Keep reading: UN Women: ‘We have to keep raising the flag of parity.’)
Entrepreneurship Laboratory
Innovation Girls 5.0 is an Entrepreneurship Laboratory that seeks to enhance the technology skills and entrepreneurial spirit of the participants in the areas of tourism, technology, transformation and use of natural resources.
In addition, the program seeks to promote the development of solutions to the problems of local environments and the ability to generate their own income for those who participate.
This, within the framework of an alternative for the economic empowerment of women in the Pacific.
exemplary woman
There are many expectations that this young leader has at this time, who seeks to continue working for the communities of Chocó. In the last year she graduated as a lawyer and continues to inspire young people of African descent through talks throughout the country in which she asks them to take advantage of their surroundings to transform their lives, those of their friends and neighbors, as well as achieve new opportunities. .
(You may be interested in: 4 Colombian scientists recognized in 3M’s ’25 women in science’).
She was the Afro-Colombian of the Year in the youth category in 2021, one of the few Colombians to win the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program and, recently, was chosen as the Cafam Chocó Woman, something that has high expectations for her, since she would see it as recognition of the work of young women in her region.
The young leader won the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program in 2021.
Photo:
Courtesy Cruz Helena Valencia Moreno
creation labs
-16-year-old women from the Pacific have enrolled in the program to strengthen their entrepreneurship.
-The laboratory helps them transform their plan into a business, train themselves and take their ideas to the next level.
-So far, more than 300 girls and young people have created science and technology solutions for their territories.
(Also: Great Ideas of Mathematics: communication made numbers).
-Kelly Córdoba and Yorleidy Parra are the girls from the program who participated in the workshop experience at NASA in August.
«The main objective of the different treatments for pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is focused on recomposing the woman’s anatomy to redirect the situation and, in turn, return normality to her altered bodily functions, such as urination, deposition or sexuality”, informs the urologist and surgeon, Carmen González Enguita.
The multidisciplinary treatment of POP women
“But we should not always go to treatment once the diagnosis has been established,” says the head of the Urology Service at the Fundación Jiménez Díaz University Hospital in Madrid. If women have no or mild symptoms, the emphasis should be on avoiding risk factors.”
“Even so, the specialists will carry out regular follow-up consultations to control the woman’s POP progression in detail,” he adds.
An organ prolapse is any descent into the pelvic floor or perineum of part of the bladder, uterus, rectum, including bowel loops, through the vagina. It is a frequent condition that up to 40% of multiparous mothers can suffer, that is, who have had several births.
“For the doctors who treat POP it is quite a challenge”
In these surprising cases, the most important thing is that the multidisciplinary team virtuously demonstrate their knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the pelvic floor.
“We must be sure of what is happening in the pelvic area for this vaginal descent of organs to occur and at the same time understand the pathophysiology of prolapse. Both aspects are fundamental when we have to plan the treatment».
“Furthermore, I would say that all women who consult for this POP problem, once diagnosed, need a preventive guidance so that they understand it well and can take care of themselves properlyavoiding factors that facilitate the progression of the pathology».
We CANNOT avoid age, or past pregnancies, or complex deliveries, or perhaps that musculoskeletal weakness characteristic of each person, or the stages that women go through throughout their lives… but we CAN avoid all those situations that increase, inappropriately, abdominal pressure.
Obesity, constipation, lung pathology that leads to chronic cough, so you have to stop smoking, important efforts performed incorrectly, such as carrying or pushing weights, and impact sports.
However, it is usually advisable to maintain healthy physical exercise, as well as rehabilitate and strengthen the pelvic floor.
Dr. Carmen González Enguita
Rehabilitation and physiotherapy with Kegel and pessaries
«They make up a specialty within Physical Medicine, which is in charge of helping to know where the muscles of the perineum are, those that participate in these pelvic problems, to learn how to exercise them, train them and strengthen them to prevent prolapse, stop its advance or even push it back,” he says.
With the kegel exercises it is possible to firmly tighten the musculature that surrounds the vagina, the urethra and the rectum.
“We must contract the muscles for one or two seconds, approximately, and then relax them for ten seconds. Little by little, the contractions lengthen until they reach periods of ten seconds, thus equaling the relaxation time », he explains.
This exercise, which women can do sitting, standing or lying down, will be repeated about ten times in a row, recommending doing each series several times a day.
Women can also use vaginal cones: inserted into the vagina, they help to contract the correct muscles to prevent the cone from falling to the ground under its own weight”, she describes.
In Rehabilitation, they also work with biofeedback devices, sensors that show the muscle contractions of the pelvic floor on a screen, and electrical stimulation, with a probe to transmit current and contract the target muscle.
The pessaries They are circular devices, although there are different shapes and models, which are inserted into the vagina to support the pelvic organs.
“They reduce prolapse and reduce symptoms, but they are not a cure. They are especially beneficial for women who are waiting for surgery and for those who do not want or cannot undergo surgery, “says the urologist.
Anatomical reconstruction of the pelvic floor and the use of mesh
When pelvic floor rehabilitation does not achieve its goals, surgical intervention is necessary to definitively treat pelvic organ prolapse (POP).
“Surgery is used in those POP cases that cause an alteration in the patient’s quality of life, whether due to discomfort, pain, loss of urine, urination difficulty, constipation or problems in sexual relations,” he relates.
There are several types of interventions, most based on anatomical reconstruction of the pelvic floor. Always try to use the patient’s own tissues.
“When these tissues are very weak and in poor condition, or when we believe that the repair cannot be carried out with these tissues, we will use tissues designed and manufactured for this purpose, such as the well-known tights«, exposes.
Dr. Carmen González Enguita
Surgeries can be performed vaginally and/or abdominally. The decision of one or the other approach will depend on the type of prolapse, the anatomical characteristics of the patient, her age, her sexual life and the skills of the surgeon.
“There are many different types of surgeries and ways to perform them. In this section, the specialist should be consulted, with whom the best agreement will surely be reached, depending on both the POP problem and the patient’s preferences and values”, concludes Dr. Carmen González Enguita.
Recovery time will depend on the type of surgery. Most women will be able to gradually resume their physical activity in a few weeks, normality conditioned by the surgical technique used.
During the six months after the intervention to correct a pelvic organ prolapse (POP), straining or lifting heavy weights should be avoided, as they can affect healing.
