Madrid Update No. 7

This afternoon at the World Forum on Migration, I attended a couple sessions on co-development. Speakers from Senegal, Ecuador, Marutania. One interesting co-development project between Madrid and Senegal brings youth to Spain to study. In fact, one of the panelist, Abdou Lahat Nadiaye, has been in spain now for 6 months (should have been 9, but his visa was delayed 3 months!). The Senegal Association is Macodou S. Sall, named after a man who started a program 30 years ago to train women and childen from the poorest of the poor neighborhoods. The goal now is to combat poverty and violence. Lahat is in Spain learning about farming-agricultural, to stop the desertization of Senegal that worsens by the day. The project has a project on solar energy.

Another panelist, Cecilia Yanez, is actually with the banking industry program, Fundicio un Sol Mou (website www.unsolmon.org). This program is focused a lot on helping immigrants from Ecuador develop work skills and small business skills in Spain, but also works with families back in Ecuador and institutions there to provide consultation and expertise for families back in Ecuador. 57% of the funding goes to women, bt there is also great reliance on remittances from migrants in Spain.

Two other panelists, Vivian Solana and Carmen Pellicer, are from an NGO, ACSUR-Las Segovias. They also focus primarily on women, and operate under a philosophy that a holistic approach to development has to be used–understanding social and cultural backgrounds and environment, not just economic issues. They believe that women are more vulnerable; they refuse to fall under the trance of imperial feminism and believe that the women can only advance with cultural understanding. Interestingly, they also rely on young adults in Spain whose parents or grandparents were immigrants. These young adults are considered big assets because they have a sense of duality and propose the most interesting ideas and have a sense of both cultures.

Panelists from Marutania emphasized the need to accept small steps, because development is not going to happen over night. Back home, communities need to learn to communicate with each other, for example, herders with farmers, to understand their needs Communication and infrastructure also needs development because there can be over 50 kilometers between towns. These panelists work on co-development projects between France and Marutania.

What I brought away from these sessions is that while co-development notions and projects are not perfect, European countries are working on these and trying to make them better. These examples, along with the philosophies I heard throughout the conference on the impact of globilization, general economic development, and debt, tell me that we in the U.S. can learn a lot from folks in Europe and in southern nations that are trying to figure out all this. We should begin our own efforts in the U.S.

bh