Association ADEVI

Presentation

The Peruvian association ADEVI was founded in 1979. This human rights organisation consists of nurses, schoolteachers, legal experts and journalists. In the beginning, its aims were to provide material aid and to supply legal advice to families coming down from the high plateaus of the Sierra and the Andes mountain range. In view of the context of war between the armed forces and the Shining Path guerillas, a significant number of families speaking Quechua came to settle around Lima.

Since the nineties, faced with economic difficulties, the aims of the association were modified in order to work with the residents of shanty-towns in Lima.

The association has established work with children within a global strategy. For example, ADEVI does not limit itself to nutritional programmes for children but acts within the perspective of preventative healthcare and, on a more global scale, within an educational perspective and within the broader perspective of working with families. The concept involves organising oneself with families to set up projects and coordinate them with local and national institutions. The idea is to develop a communitarian programme of organisation in the local districts in conjunction with schools, churches, local authorities and state institutions.

ADEVI is concerned to act with and for these populations by reinforcing the process of autonomy. ADEVI is supported by the process of organisation of the beneficiaries. The NGOs need to be levers to facilitate the organisation of families, citizens in the projects within which they are the principle actors. The role of ADEVI is to be a catalyst, a facilitator of the process of growing awareness of the need to be organised and to inform people about their rights.

ADEVI instigates the organisation of the inhabitants of shanty-towns by putting in place commissions on schools, installing main drainage, water and education. These committees are sources of learning, public speaking, social organisation, mobilisation and politicisation. ADEVI integrates its initiatives into these organisational networks.

Activities

Examples of activities: awareness raising and prevention with families on the question of child labour and the establishment of an educational centre. The basis of the work rests on a communal experience which permits the initiation of a dialogue on questions of education and child labour.

Preventative initiatives in the domain of health are not limited to providing information. The prevention is linked to the organisation and mobilisation of resources at the heart of the community.