My name is Abby Weil and I have been given the opportunity to work in Guatemala as an Advocacy Project Fellow for Peace this summer.  Guatemala is a country that has suffered through a thirty-six year civil war that ended officially in 1996 with the signing of the Peace Accords.  During this war, the government and military engaged in scorched earth tactics to destroy the social, cultural and economic fabric of countless indigenous Mayan communities that they perceived as being sympathetic to the guerillas.  One such community in Rabinal, Guatemala was targeted because they resisted their land being confiscated for the creation of a large dam.  Countless massacres of men, women, and children occurred in Rabinal with a death toll between 4,000 and 5,000 people. These massacres tore the very foundation of the community and continues to have social, psychological, and economic effects on the residents.  As of today, no one has been held responsible for the atrocities committed in Rabinal.  

I have been hired as an Advocacy Project Peace Fellow to work with an organization called the Association for Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achi (ADIVIMA).  The Advocacy Project is a DC-based nonprofit that supports community-based advocates for human rights and social change.  ADIVIMA, an AP partner, works to seek solutions to the social, political, educational, and economic problems caused by the internal conflict and the massacres in Rabinal, specifically.  ADIVIMA works towards the goal of human rights through providing psychosocial support during exhumations of mass graves and proper burials, creating memorials and hosting commemoration ceremonies for those killed, creating personal documentation of those killed and the human rights violations, and assisting in legal processes against those responsible for the killings.  This organization empowers survivors of the massacres, including widows and orphans, through productive and sustainable projects such as rotating credit and land and housing acquisition projects.  Finally, ADIVIMA works tirelessly to educate others on the human rights abuses that have taken place in Guatemala in order to fight for justice and in the hopes that atrocities of the likes of Rabinal will never happen again.  

Your support will allow me to assist ADIVIMA in their mission to empower the survivors of the massacres and seek justice for all those affected by the massacres and the Advocacy Project in their goal to support organizations such as ADIVIMA through the Fellows for Peace Program.  ADIVIMA has no English language capacity in their office and your donations will allow me to work with their talented staff to be able to create and disseminate information to an international audience to affect change.  While the Peace Accords may have been signed, no one has been held responsible for the massacres against the indigenous communities in Guatemala and the residents are still suffering the effects.  I am asking for your support to allow me to work for a truly worthy organization that is fighting for peace, justice, and human rights.  I will keep all donors informed of my work and the progress of the projects at ADIVIMA through a blog and emails sent throughout the summer.  

Thank you so much in advance for your time and support!