An Update from Give Us Names

An Update from Give Us Names from Give Us Names on Vimeo.

You are reading this because you are a dear friend, family member, or supporter of our organization.  We want to let you know how sincerely thankful we are for your many contributions of time, encouragement, prayer, and money.  Because you are a friend and have been so generous we want to let you know about whats currently going on within the walls of Give Us Names HQ.

Last month, we sent two of our team members to Colombia to check on the Joya family and to interview the next five families that we would be raising money to help resettle this fall.  Upon meeting with the Joyas, we learned that they have faced many unexpected challenges since returning to the countryside.  From the teacher in their area quitting, to their house falling victim to unforeseen damages, the move wound up being a more difficult transition than anyone could have anticipated.  As a result, we learned that after they harvest the rice we helped them plant, they may return to the city to find stable work and schooling for their children.  We can't blame them for choosing to do what is best for their family, and we support whatever decision they make.

After hearing this news, and learning that many families in the city fear returning to the countryside because of the continued threat of violence and future displacement, we had to take a hard look at our Colombia programs.  Is restoring home by resettling from the city to the countryside the best way we can help the displaced right now?  Can we return families to the countryside despite inadequate infrastructure, sense of security, or guarantee of access to adequate healthcare and education?  What is the outlook for families 1 year, 5 years, 10 years out?  Is there a better way we can dedicate our time and resources to restore and protect home for the displaced?  These are the questions that we are actively trying to answer.  While we search for solutions, we feel it is necessary to pause our plans and proceed carefully.

For the past three years, we have all undertaken this work without pay, and with all of our hearts.  Though incredibly fulfilling, this endeavor has started to take a toll on all of us, and we know that a team with no energy cannot accomplish a mission as great as ours.  We believe that in the long term we will all benefit from stabilizing our present health and well being.  The decision to take a step back has been a difficult one, and has not come without much deliberation, prayer, and wisdom sought from our board of directors and other trusted individuals.

With all of that said, the attached video explains where we are currently and our mindset moving forward.  We will continue to search for the best ways that we can restore home for those who have had it taken away, to fight to protect home for those who still have it, and to give dignity to those who have no voice. Don't think for a minute that we are closing up shop. Despite the chalenges we currently face, this work is far from over.

Thank you for your support.  We appreciate your prayers and thoughts now just as much now as we ever have.  We all have much to be proud of, and what we have done has only come from the support of many like you.  Though we cannot lay out our future plans in detail, we fully believe that this mission is not yet over.

Martin Luther King once chanted out this benediction of peace:  "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  We hope more deeply in that truth now than we ever have before.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please do not hesitate to contact any of us.

With deep appreciation,

The Give Us Names Team

Storytellers: The Family

Raising a family is arguably one of the greatest challenges of life. Regardless of nationality or locality, keeping each member of a family fed, clothed and safe is an impressive undertaking. Each day is a push to make ends meet. Every passing year is a study in survival. Looking at the breakdown of a vast number of family structures, Wendell Berry has commented that, “[...] like a community, a family doesn’t stay together just out of sentiment.” No matter whether a person comes from North America, South America or anywhere else on the map, forces everywhere pull and tear at families.

Yet, we love our families and so we push back. We work, day in and day out, to provide food, home, education and safety for one another. No two families look the same but regardless of these differences, we defend our family to the best of our ability. 

Like any other family, Abelardo Joya and Olga Patricia Orozco Suarez wake each morning to face this challenge. They care for an energetic brood of five: Erica, Yuris, Dayana, Johan and tiny Miguel. The couple has fought this daily battle for the past thirteen years. Abelardo has worked his whole life so that he might own a farm in the Colombian countryside; they call their home La Floresta. 

Daily life in La Floresta is trying. Planting, harvesting and maintaining the farm contribute to the general energy of hustle and bustle. Yet, the family has exactly what they need. The children have space to roam and clean water to drink. Food and firewood are always available. Olga recognizes the essential peacefulness of their home, the happy rhythms of a family at work and play. Abelardo hauls and chops, plants and cares for La Floresta but never lacks time to run around with his children, reveling in their playful spirit. 

Sadly, this joyful farm life was nearly lost to the Joya family. One morning, a few years ago, a small plane flew over La Floresta. This plane was dropping herbicides intended to kill the illegal coca crops grown by various farms in the region. Without a care, the plane dropped these potent chemicals on the Joyas‘ farm. In a moment, Abelardo’s life work was ruined, his crops decimated. The Joyas could not fight this significant financial blow and were forced to abandon their home to move into a barrio on the outskirts of Barrancabermeja. Abelardo and Olga desperately grasped for any way to keep their family afloat. It seemed that the forces of displacement might win.

It was as this point that the Give Us Names crew met the Joyas. Upon hearing their story, we realized that what had happened to this family was an injustice which we could do something about. Recognizing that the United States played a major role in funding the aerial fumigations that displaced the Joyas, we knew that it would be our job, if at all possible, to return the Joyas to their home. In January of this year, we walked home with Abelardo, Olga and their little ones. We were there to eat, play and celebrate with the Joyas. We felt their elation and peace upon once again calling La Floresta home.  

Keeping a family together is difficult enough without the additional threat of displacement. We all wake in the morning and hope that we will be able to make it through the day, caring for the ones we love. Imagine trying to do this each day with the knowledge that at any given moment, a small plane might fly overhead and ruin everything. 

Thankfully, most of us do not have to deal with this added threat. We have the security and means to care for our families. We hope that you will join consider joining with Give Us Names in providing families like the Joyas with an equal opportunity to fight for their own. “A family doesn’t stay together out of sentiment,” so join the resistance.    

Crafting a space

A lot of what we do at Give Us Names has to do with crafting a space where people can be the best versions of themselves. When we tell stories about people who have been taken away from home, and subsequently use those stories to help restore home to them, it's because we believe in the power that their home has to bring the best out of a person. There is a quote a friend shared with me last week that got me thinking a bit about what these spaces are for, the quote was from a really wise and wonderful priest named Henry Nouwen.

Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.

Hospitable spaces can do incredible things to a person. One thing in particular they can do is cause our imaginations to come alive with the prospect of what could be. Two summers ago I went to a small event a couple of friends of mine put together and their mission was to experiment with what a space like this could do for a person. The event was called IdeaFARM, and it was more a guided brainstorming session than any kind of event I had been apart of before. We met at a beautiful lake house in south Georgia for three days and talked about what could be. The results were amazing, many of the people who attended that conference have gone on to make their ideas happen, and others found relationships that have helped them kickstart other ideas.

My encouragement for you this week would be to find a hospitable space where you can brainstorm, maybe even a space where you can be cultivated by someone older and wiser in your brainstorming. My experience is that these kinds of spaces can do a lot for my soul and for my ideas.

If you are interested, my friends are hosting IdeaFARM again this summer, and they would love for you to check it out. If you are interested check out their site here.

Storytellers: The Place

There are many who have given up on Colombia. They have washed their hands of her. When people ask, “Why Colombia?” it is in light of a global panorama of the nation depicting only violence and destruction. Give Us Names sees something different. We have taken a step closer and have seen the other side. After spending time in Colombia, living and working with the people, growing to understand the pains and passions of a nation, we have fallen for Colombia. When we think of her, we see faces. We see homes. We see human dreams and struggles, much like our own. We see stories left untold and we believe that in telling these stories, people will come to know the Colombia that we love.

Understanding someone means knowing their story, where they have come from and who they have become. If we are to know Colombia, we must first understand the primary events and figures that have shaped her. The story of Colombia is relatable, regardless of nationality or personal history, because it is universal. It is a story of beauty and desolation, power and powerlessness, darkness and light. A study in contrasts, Colombia is a nation striving to balance more potential than she knows what to do with. This has, sadly, fostered within Colombia a penchant for self-mutilation.   

The history of Colombia’s struggles can be traced back many, many years. For our purposes, we begin in 1948, with an assassination. The murder of presidential candidate Jorge Gaitan set off an implosion of brutal Colombian conflict lasting ten years, known as La Violencia. Providing a date for the end of this conflict is misleading in that the end of a war typically means a time of peace will follow. Colombia, would not be so lucky.

Riding on the coattails of this brutal period, a group of Marxist guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, banded together, propping themselves up as the “Robin Hood” figures of their nation, fighting for the poor and oppressed. This meant war on the wealthy elite of Colombia. These wealthy landowners were not ready to lay down and accept the destruction of their lives and work. So they picked up their hatchets as well, pushing back with the same brute military force in the form of privatized paramilitaries. Colombia became increasingly polarized, as all were forced to take sides or risk the loss of everything.

This sort of wide-spread militant activity is expensive to maintain and both sides of the conflict began looking for alternative methods of funding their forces. Cue the Colombian cocaine boom. It was during the ‘70’s and ’80’s that the Colombia drug cartels suddenly rose to power. Countries throughout the world began consuming cocaine in staggering amounts, the United States being one of the primary consumers. As a result, cultivation of illegal coca crops and the manufacturing of cocaine boomed in Colombia. The militant activity of these cartels only added to the severity of Colombia’s violent conflict, dragging the nation into an even greater state of self-destruction.

As the 1990’s rolled in, the drug cartels fell apart but the drugs remained. The FARC and right-wing paramilitaries saw this as their new source of funding, capitalizing on the disappearance of the drug lords. Not only did these groups now control the production of cocaine in Colombia, they were often paid by various multinationals to kill and displace communities occupying fertile land. This two-fold payday triggered such an extreme surge in the power of these militant groups, that the United States became increasingly anxious. The U.S. government began to search for ways they might check the power of these groups to protect American interests and entanglements in Colombia as well as neighboring nations.

This is where aerial fumigations entered the picture. In 2000, the United States government introduced a military-aid package called Plan Colombia. The purpose of this aid was to combat the increasing number of narcotics being trafficked into the United States. Plan Colombia would strike at the heart of the drug problem by getting rid of the source, coca being grown in Colombia. Pilots, funded by the U.S., would fly over coca fields and spray a dangerous Glyphosate-based herbicide on the source, killing the plants used to produce cocaine. In theory, this would contribute to the end of the Colombian cocaine trade.

In practice, it has contributed to displacing thousands of innocent farmers from their land. This is because the planes spraying these chemicals are only capable of spraying a large area of farmland, not just one farm. In areas where coca is produced, these illegal farms are most often interspersed among farmers who are growing their own, legal crops. Because winds are hard to predict and planes fly much higher than they should when spraying a field, accuracy winds up being an imprecise science, and neighboring farms are often sprayed. This is just seen as collateral damage. The unfortunate reality that results is that any crop is killed, any farmer loses his livelihood, whether he was growing coca or something perfectly legal. Even worse, coca plants, if harvested quickly when sprayed, can still be gathered and manufactured into cocaine. The illegal growers can still make a profit, while innocent farmers lose everything.

If this plan were the solution, we would not be writing this blog. As of today, U.S. taxpayers have spent $8 billion dollars on a policy that, we believe, has only contributed to greater destruction within a nation. Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people (IDP’s) in the world. As we have come to know Colombia and her people, it became apparent that we cannot ignore the fact that our nation, the United States, is contributing to this violation of human rights through our participation in aerial fumigations.

The Colombian people understand the meaning of resilience. These are people who have passed through countless injustices and still dare to hope. Try to imagine how your life might appear after living through the story we have just shared. Would you dare to farm? Would you dare marry and bring children into this world? Would you still hope?

Living in Colombia, a nation widely disregarded as a hopeless mess, there remain individuals working for the restoration of their land, their families and their nation. Colombia is home and they know its potential. Who are we to steal these dreams, fumigating their carefully cultivated hopes? This is why we must tell the stories of Colombia. It is this spirit of resiliency that we know and love. We hope that in hearing the struggles of the place we love, you will join with us in fighting for its victories.  

We seek to tell stories to restore home. Our stories have become inexplicably intertwined with the stories of those in Colombia who, for various reasons, are unable to tell their own. We believe that in telling these stories, shedding light on the injustices enacted in the lives of these individuals, we can join together to help provide restoration. Over the course of the summer, we will be telling our story and their story, since they are truly inseparable. We hope you jump in and join with us in telling this grand narrative. Be an adventurer, dreamer, explorer, and imagineer. Celebrate life, fight with us for restoration. Be a storyteller. 

Storytellers: The Beginning

This summer, Brittany Price is writing a series of blog posts that tell the story of Give Us Names and our work in Colombia.  This is chapter one in our "Storytellers" series, and tells of the journeys that led us to this point.

A number of years ago, a small red-headed boy lived in the woods of Virginia. Home was a peaceful log cabin, but this vagabond’s rambling mind wandered every which way. This little boy was a dreamer, a storyteller. His childhood was spent writing fantastical stories filled with grand adventures. As he grew older, his stories grew in their scope and complexity, often ending in an unfortunate zombie apocalypse. The boy began to dream of making movies, showing his stories, rather than simply telling them. Elsewhere in Virginia, a young boy wanted to be a soldier, to fight for the people he loved. Belonging to a band of six children and an impressively large extended family, this boy was all too familiar with the feeling of being rallied with the troops. He relished being part of something bigger than himself. Hardly in the spring of his life, he carried a heart to serve.

Down south, in Georgia, two young adventurers were growing, waiting for their grand journey, just like the young boys in Virginia. One of the adventurers fancied himself a pirate, or in the least, Huckleberry Finn. He often spent his time fashioning styrofoam ships, which would set out on journeys across the treacherous waters of Lake Lanier. He hoped that, one day, he too would set out on this sort of journey. The other boy, a thoughtful “imagineer” of sorts, spent many a childhood evening constructing complex tents, or rather, impenetrable forts, in his living room. Suburbia provided an idyllic childhood for this young boy, but something about perfect eventually seemed to lose its luster. He craved something bigger than what he knew. As the young adventurers and imaginers grew, reality began to sink in. People asked, “What will you do? Who will you be?” The boys began to ask themselves these questions as well. Their answer was the reason that, fifteen years later, these boys, covered in mud and sweat, found themselves trudging through the dense greenery of the Colombian forest. No longer boys, these men had, miraculously, arrived in the same place at the same time for the same purpose. What is their purpose? To tell stories. This was the answer to those seemingly impossible questions posed about their future. They would be storytellers.

The men realized that their past (childhoods spent exploring and dreaming) and their future hopes and desires were a part of a grand narrative. These stories were celebrated, carefully tended and fostered by the love and opportunity in each of their lives. Yet, in years spent traveling and studying, the men realized that there are countless stories left untold. After discovering that the nation of Colombia has the largest number of internally displaced people in the world, each of these men came to the conclusion that the stories of these displaced men, women and children ought to  be told. As a result, Give Us Names came to be.

We seek to tell stories to restore home. Our stories have become inexplicably intertwined with the stories of those in Colombia who, for various reasons, are unable to tell their own. We believe that in telling these stories, shedding light on the injustices enacted in the lives of these individuals, we can join together to help provide restoration.  Over the course of the summer, we will be telling our story and their story, since they are truly inseparable. We hope you jump in and join with us in telling this grand narrative. Be an adventurer, dreamer, explorer, and imagineer. Celebrate life, fight with us for restoration. Be a storyteller.