Update by Luana Esquenazi, MCLD Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Coordinator
¡These have been exciting months for MCLD Latin America & The Caribbean!
On October 15th, 13 members and friends of MCLD in Latin America & The Caribbean got together for the Movement’s first regional meeting. Organizations from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panamá, Uruguay and Venezuela participated.
Gunjan Veda, global secretary of MCLD, was there to welcome them and introduce MCLD’s most important values and principles. Following that conversation, we moved into brainstorming and identifying the main challenges in Latin America & the Caribbean, as well as envisioning what 2035 could look like for the region if we all work together.
These two exercises are part of the adapted Transformative Scenario Planning methodology that MCLD is using for the development of our five-year strategic planning. We are proud to incorporate the visions of the LAC members into MCLD’s 2025-2029 strategic plan. The brainstorm also facilitated the beginning of members collectively reflecting on the particularities of the LAC region, a fundamental step to effectively give shape to the Movement here with strategic priorities. Here is a word map that resumes some of the main topics we discussed.
As of today, MCLD Latin America has several friends – in countries like Brazil and México- and a total of eleven members in the following countries: Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Perú and Venezuela. You can find the links of our organizational members – and the links to their work – on our website. We invite you to check them out! Our members cover a variety of topics ranging from freedom of speech and assembly to Human Rights defenders, peacekeeping and climate change among others.
At our second regional meeting on Monday November 4th, we discussed several dimensions of our work together: how to articulate the regional dimension at the national and local level, the main topics in the LAC agenda (civic space & Human Rights, corruption, poverty and environment) and the possibility of creating working groups to focus on cross-cutting topics like climate change and indigenous communities rights.
Our LAC members and friends are actively participating in all MCLD’s events and are working hard -and collectively- to shape a resilient and strong MCLD for the region, that would be able to house all organizations that would like to join and help them advance their own goals, visions and missions.
We will keep you posted on this growing, vibrant part of our movement!
Mafaldina Vignette by Quino
Featured Photo: Pen and ink drawing, Joaquín Torres García, 1943