Our partner, the Federación de Mujeres de Sucumbíos, provides the only specialized local services for survivors of gender-based violence in the province – through their shelter Casa Amiga and their treatment center Puerta Violeta.
Ten years after our successful pilot program, we have renewed our collaboration to bring transformative healing to more survivors.
Background
About a 5-hour drive from Quito, in the Amazon Basin, Sucumbios province is home to over 175 thousand people. For decades the oil industry’s extractive practices have violated the ecosystem, exploited workers, and disrupted communities. This cascade of systemic violence and forced displacement has particularly affected women.
FMS, the Women’s Federation of Sucumbios, is a collective of over 100 grassroots groups that have organized to respond to gender injustice in the province, providing the kind of protection and care for survivors that is so acutely needed.
“I know that with this process I can accomplish and create many things that before seemed impossible to me. ”
OUR WORK TODAY
In May 2023, we trained 14 new facilitators in the Common Threads methodology. Some of the facilitators have lived experience as survivors of GBV, others are skilled mental health providers, indigenous healers, or faith leaders.
The new program, “Mujeres que Sanan” (Women who Heal) brings together groups of women in healing circles in Lago Agrio, Puerto El Carmen, and Quito. In 2023, two circles have begun meeting, with two more planned for the coming months.
As these facilitators gain expertise and experience in the intervention, FMS will begin to develop into a Center of Excellence in the region.
“Knowing each other fills me with joy, strengthening the conviction that we can come together to embroider better worlds.”
Our Beginnings
The pilot project of Common Threads was launched in 2012 in Lago Agrio, Ecuador. In partnership with the Federation de Mujeres de Sucumbíos (FMS), local facilitators were trained and adapted the intervention for use in their communities.
The 30 participants demonstrated a significant reduction of mental health symptoms and increased coping capacity. The women found it to be a transformative, healing experience, and they asked to continue their participation into an additional phase of sessions. Some members of the original groups continued to meet, sew, and provide ongoing peer support for one another.
In the 10 years since our initial collaboration, FMS has brought arpilleras into all aspects of their work and advocacy.
“We put our hearts into it. We embroider and sew an arpillera together to keep the memory of this moment and to spread a message of collective freedom, because we can only be free when we are together.”
From Healing to Activism
To commemorate the 16 Days of Global Activism against Gender-based Violence, an exhibition of the work of the arpillera groups was held at a museum in Quito in Nov/Dec 2013. The participants attended the launch of the exhibition, spoke publicly about their experiences, and advocated for SBGV prevention.
The exhibit was shown again in Geneva, Switzerland at the UN Palais des Nations Summer 2014.
In the years since our original collaboration, FMS has continued to integrate arpilleras (story cloths) into their activism. Each year, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women people from all over the province gather to sew all night, making a cloth in memory of the victims of femicide.
View Story Cloths from Ecuador
