Saltamontes Environmental Summit
Donation protected
Saltamontes is a non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to constructing positive peace in communities affected both directly and indirectly by Colombia’s half-century-long armed conflict; we are proud to have been approved and officially registered in Colombia as Fundación Saltamontes Network (Saltamontes Network Foundation). Although the peace agreement was officially signed in 2016, the effects of the protracted conflict persist. Now three years out from our inception as a student-led pilot project funded by Swarthmore College, we have evolved into a force for real, positive change, engaging an otherwise-untapped niche of Colombian civil society’s peacebuilding efforts through social innovation. Working closely with community leaders, emerging social innovators, and other local stakeholders, we have been able to identify and begin addressing the long-term, structural needs of those most vulnerable sectors of Colombian society, while also providing short-term, direct aid when appropriate.
Our vision calls for a horizontal collaborative structure that places us on a level field with our intended beneficiaries, ensuring we do not erroneously overstep or impose our own perceptions upon communities and individuals who are themselves capable of self-realization when provided the right tools and trusted with their own self-determination. Listening to, empathizing with, and understanding our community partners allows us to allocate resources meaningfully and effectively, thereby creating tangible and—most importantly—beneficial change. Seeking to maximize our impact, we have focused our energy on working with promising young leaders who, despite unrelenting hardships and societal marginalization, seek to better themselves and their communities each and every day; it is this next generation of youth who demonstrate the creativity and drive that Saltamontes taps into in order to inspire change at the grassroots level.
Over the past several years, we have sought to motivate young leaders to reject attitudes of complacency and helplessness imposed by geo-economic marginalization and intergenerational exposures to violence. We have sought to provide relevant education and training so that communities may utilize all of the tools at their disposal to practically address the issues they identify as most pressing. And, to this end, we have worked to connect communities despite geographic separation so that they may pool resources, ideas, and strategies as we collaborate in the co-creation of the just and lasting peace we all envision.
Though initially beyond the scope of what we perceived to fall within the realm of peacebuilding, environmental factors have increasingly been brought to our attention by our community partners as a critical category to address in our efforts. As we have worked with them, we have borne witness to the ways that many urban and rural communities deteriorate physically with each passing day. The frequency of natural disasters increases each year, and ecosystems suffer the consequences of irresponsible waste management, deforestation, river redirection, and other ecological disservices. Large corporations take advantage of the de facto political disenfranchisement of isolated and poverty-stricken communities (disproportionally indigenous and afro-Colombian communities) to carry out their projects with free reign, absolved of any responsibility in answering to those whose environments they contaminate and destroy. Benefiting themselves, corrupt government officials perpetuate and exacerbate these patterns by employing clientilistic practices that coerces communities away from developing a political consciousness or opposition. Moreover, forced to depend on plastics and outdated machinery and infrastructure, communities mismanage the waste they produce, further contaminating their immediate environments and lowering the quality of life for residents.
While these are issues felt globally, the most distressing contention substantiated by these in the Colombian context is the effect they have on families that have already been beaten down by years of political violence, land theft, exploitation, and other abuses of human dignity; after losing everything, a steady degradation of a person’s surroundings serves only to deepen feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and dependency, all of which underpins their marginalized condition. Given the direct link between the aforementioned and the armed conflict itself, we have come to believe adamantly that a just, lasting, and positive peace cannot be built without also taking on environmental challenges.
With this in mind, we at Saltamontes have been working to organize a summit aimed at addressing these challenges. In January, we will be gathering representatives from a variety of communities across the country in the city of Cartagena to confront environmental challenges head-on. Over the course of our one-week summit, we will develop a comprehensive environmental action plan with our participants that addresses the diverse needs and place-specific strengths of heterogeneous communities while also working to find common ground in the collective task of environmental action. We will also be bringing in climate activists, environmental engineers, community organizers, youth leaders, local government officials, and other experts to guide our cohort in detailing the specifics of the plan we will be developing. Looking beyond our January summit, our plan is to support community partners in executing their initiatives. Eventually, we hope to phase ourselves out as initiatives become independently sustainable.
So, I write this to you on behalf of Saltamontes as its co-founder and acting president in order to inform you of our next steps and ask for your support in bringing these efforts to life. We are just over a month away from the beginning of our summit in Cartagena and we are short on funds. If you are able and willing to contribute, your generous donation will go in its entirety toward creating a successful forum by which promising young leaders, who are otherwise deprived of comparable platforms, will be able to imagine and shape the futures of their respective communities. If any funds are left over from the summit in January, they will be carried forth to be utilized in support of the initiatives that are to be developed at the summit. Through this meaningful and rigorous experience, we will be able to continue our peacebuilding efforts by directly supporting those whose communities have suffered the most in facing the challenges that constitute Colombia’s post-conflict realities.
On behalf of the Saltamontes team and the Saltamontes Network as a whole, I would like to extend my upmost gratitude to you for taking the time to read about our initiative and for considering making a donation to our cause. To those who have donated before, thank you for your continued trust and support of our work. We could not do it without you!
Thank you,
Zackary S. Lash
President, Fundación Saltamontes Network
LEARN MORE ABOUT US
**Disclaimer**
We initially tried running this fundraiser via GoFundMe: Charity; however, because Fundación Saltamontes Network is registered in Colombia (and not in the USA or Canada) we could not add ourselves to their database. This is why this campaign appears as an individual campaign, rather than that of a nonprofit.
Our vision calls for a horizontal collaborative structure that places us on a level field with our intended beneficiaries, ensuring we do not erroneously overstep or impose our own perceptions upon communities and individuals who are themselves capable of self-realization when provided the right tools and trusted with their own self-determination. Listening to, empathizing with, and understanding our community partners allows us to allocate resources meaningfully and effectively, thereby creating tangible and—most importantly—beneficial change. Seeking to maximize our impact, we have focused our energy on working with promising young leaders who, despite unrelenting hardships and societal marginalization, seek to better themselves and their communities each and every day; it is this next generation of youth who demonstrate the creativity and drive that Saltamontes taps into in order to inspire change at the grassroots level.
Over the past several years, we have sought to motivate young leaders to reject attitudes of complacency and helplessness imposed by geo-economic marginalization and intergenerational exposures to violence. We have sought to provide relevant education and training so that communities may utilize all of the tools at their disposal to practically address the issues they identify as most pressing. And, to this end, we have worked to connect communities despite geographic separation so that they may pool resources, ideas, and strategies as we collaborate in the co-creation of the just and lasting peace we all envision.
Though initially beyond the scope of what we perceived to fall within the realm of peacebuilding, environmental factors have increasingly been brought to our attention by our community partners as a critical category to address in our efforts. As we have worked with them, we have borne witness to the ways that many urban and rural communities deteriorate physically with each passing day. The frequency of natural disasters increases each year, and ecosystems suffer the consequences of irresponsible waste management, deforestation, river redirection, and other ecological disservices. Large corporations take advantage of the de facto political disenfranchisement of isolated and poverty-stricken communities (disproportionally indigenous and afro-Colombian communities) to carry out their projects with free reign, absolved of any responsibility in answering to those whose environments they contaminate and destroy. Benefiting themselves, corrupt government officials perpetuate and exacerbate these patterns by employing clientilistic practices that coerces communities away from developing a political consciousness or opposition. Moreover, forced to depend on plastics and outdated machinery and infrastructure, communities mismanage the waste they produce, further contaminating their immediate environments and lowering the quality of life for residents.
While these are issues felt globally, the most distressing contention substantiated by these in the Colombian context is the effect they have on families that have already been beaten down by years of political violence, land theft, exploitation, and other abuses of human dignity; after losing everything, a steady degradation of a person’s surroundings serves only to deepen feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and dependency, all of which underpins their marginalized condition. Given the direct link between the aforementioned and the armed conflict itself, we have come to believe adamantly that a just, lasting, and positive peace cannot be built without also taking on environmental challenges.
With this in mind, we at Saltamontes have been working to organize a summit aimed at addressing these challenges. In January, we will be gathering representatives from a variety of communities across the country in the city of Cartagena to confront environmental challenges head-on. Over the course of our one-week summit, we will develop a comprehensive environmental action plan with our participants that addresses the diverse needs and place-specific strengths of heterogeneous communities while also working to find common ground in the collective task of environmental action. We will also be bringing in climate activists, environmental engineers, community organizers, youth leaders, local government officials, and other experts to guide our cohort in detailing the specifics of the plan we will be developing. Looking beyond our January summit, our plan is to support community partners in executing their initiatives. Eventually, we hope to phase ourselves out as initiatives become independently sustainable.
So, I write this to you on behalf of Saltamontes as its co-founder and acting president in order to inform you of our next steps and ask for your support in bringing these efforts to life. We are just over a month away from the beginning of our summit in Cartagena and we are short on funds. If you are able and willing to contribute, your generous donation will go in its entirety toward creating a successful forum by which promising young leaders, who are otherwise deprived of comparable platforms, will be able to imagine and shape the futures of their respective communities. If any funds are left over from the summit in January, they will be carried forth to be utilized in support of the initiatives that are to be developed at the summit. Through this meaningful and rigorous experience, we will be able to continue our peacebuilding efforts by directly supporting those whose communities have suffered the most in facing the challenges that constitute Colombia’s post-conflict realities.
On behalf of the Saltamontes team and the Saltamontes Network as a whole, I would like to extend my upmost gratitude to you for taking the time to read about our initiative and for considering making a donation to our cause. To those who have donated before, thank you for your continued trust and support of our work. We could not do it without you!
Thank you,
Zackary S. Lash
President, Fundación Saltamontes Network
LEARN MORE ABOUT US
**Disclaimer**
We initially tried running this fundraiser via GoFundMe: Charity; however, because Fundación Saltamontes Network is registered in Colombia (and not in the USA or Canada) we could not add ourselves to their database. This is why this campaign appears as an individual campaign, rather than that of a nonprofit.
Organizer
Zackary Lash
Organizer
North Miami Beach, FL