New FOR team office

Sarah Weintraub, who served on the FOR team in Colombia for over a year, traveled to Bogotá to set up the office, following a successful U.S. tour. She gave 23 presentations about Colombia and international protective accompaniment to Buddhist and community groups in California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota, Seattle, and at the School of the Americas protest in Georgia. In Bogotá, she is joined by Patricia Abbott from the United Kingdom, the FOR’s first non-US volunteer. FOR volunteers Denise Fraga and Daniel Malakoff, continue to accompany members of the San José Peace Community. In addition, the Swedish branch of International FOR has recently established an accompaniment team in Colombia. 

The FOR’s Bogotá team will meet Colombian and US officials to express FOR’s concerns, accompany international delegations visiting Colombia, and give training and support to the team in San José de Apartadó. It also will explore, during an assessment through May, how to support other communities and groups who are working against the violent logic of the country’s 50-year-old conflict. 

Several of these communities and groups were highlighted in Building from the Inside Out: Peace Initiatives in War-Torn Colombia, published by FOR and the American Friends Service Committee in November. The 36-page report is full of stories, analysis, testimonies and photos of diverse efforts to resist military service and cooperation with any of the armed groups, ranging from organized Nasa indigenous communities to a Medellín youth group that supports conscientious objection and protests the military. Copies

are available for $5 postpaid from FOR; lower-priced copies in bulk are also available.

For more information, to obtain a copy of Building from the Inside, or for a free subscription to FOR’s monthly email update on Colombia, contact the FOR Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean:

Tel: 415-495-6334.

Email: forcolombia@igc.org