Editor’s note: This blog post is also available in Spanish.

“My humanity is caught up in yours, for we can only be human together.” – Desmond Tutu

The violence and domination perpetrated against communities and identities from the global south have tried to make us perfect strangers: aliens who will continue to ignore (and maybe assault) each other until we defeat our boundaries. Until we inhabit again the community, the bonds and our shared realities.   

1. Asociación SERniña

GFC partner, Asociación SERniña, works with different communities in Sacatepéquez, Guatemala. It guides girls, boys and young people in finding their “true self” through an authentic identity that recognises and celebrates the skills, critical thinking, spiritual and corporal love, and trust needed to make informed decisions and become positive agents of change in their lives and communities.

Asociación SERniña is a dream, a light of hope, and a wonderful community. I consider myself a young man who found an honest and motivating space to understand myself in a different way and become who I really want to be.

2. Healthy Masculinity: Our Work with Boys and Young Men

The negative impacts of colonial and hegemonic masculinity force boys and young men to live in an ecosystem marked with violence from birth. The masculinity stereotypes make deep wounds with a particular and long-lasting negative impact on their realities, their families, and communities: drug addiction, depression, gender violence, discrimination, etc. This limits them from building and becoming part of a community linked to a cosmic web of interdependence and care. Hegemonic masculinity isolates and kills.

Asociación raises awareness of gender, colonialism and abuse by working with children and young men to offer guidance. They taught us to listen before leading the way. They know clearly what is needed to be an authentic, free, and agreeable being. Therefore, I believe that SERniña’s work is “build a community and walk with children,” instead of “shape/help the child.”

One of the most empowering experiences in this journey has been the creation of the “Young Masculinities Lab” in 2022 with GFC’s support. We wanted boys and adolescents who we had worked with before in education and awareness, to have a new space to question themselves and contribute to the healing of their families and communities. For them to talk to other boys and young men and share the challenges and enormous advantages of adopting masculine traits based on respect, love, and shared responsibilities.

To those first young men who accepted the big challenge of becoming traitors of the patriarchy and embrace life, pleasure, and plenitude as political outlooks: thank you for joining me in the process. Together we have built a community and fought violence with happiness and creativity.

3.“Healthy Masculinities” Forum in Sierra Leone

From this experience and as an outcome of 3 years of shared work inside the HEEL Initiative that promotes healthy masculinity, GFC invited me to travel to Sierra Leone to participate in the “Healthy Masculinities Conference”. It was co-organised by the African team and the SAL-LIB Initiative partners who prevent gender violence, implemented in Liberia and Sierra Leone since 2021.

I have never travelled outside of Central America, and until then, had not seen a white sand beach. I discovered that I do not like flying and I am the coldest person around.

I helped planning the sessions by contributing the organic and authentic experience of my work in Asociación SERniña and the wonderful activities the team has designed from and for young people. From common education’s methodology, girls, boys, and young adults participated in creating kites which are very important in Guatemalan culture because they represent our bond with our ancestors. They reflected on their lives to identify abuses given and received, and how to eliminate them. We played, reflected, and dared to be vulnerable. We connected through our pains, our dreams and hopes.

More than an analysis or review, I wish to share the amazing chance of finding, observing, listening, understanding, supporting, and healing each other through affection was powerful and life-changing. Realising that we are not strangers, we have just not been able to come together and strengthen from our lands. Our pains and hopes unite us.

I remember Jabbi from CASE-SALONE organisation who lovingly took care of us from our landing in Bureh Beach, and how we pleaded him to rest and relax without worrying about us. “Professor Mattia” and his formidable eloquence when speaking. Mustapha who welcomed us by dancing and singing, treated us to traditional clothing, and healed my throat. Ibrahim and his lecture on African colonialism, the African unification dream, and the similarities between Guatemala and Sierra Leone, while sharing roasted rice in a paper made plate on a bus towards Bo.

Then, we built together every word, feeling, smile, colour, kite, celebration, and game. My always beloved “Kasseh Bureh Healthy Community,” a new and beautiful supporting community that will prevail despite distance.

4. Echoes, (Re)encounters and “Thinking-feelings” from the Forum

As individuals militating different purposes and habitants of many territories, as racialised beings, colonised territories, men and women fighting against the gender and imposition regime, we increasingly need these forums, these lessons and dialogues. Social organisations of different territories need to see dialogue and exchange as a means for our mutual and collective freedom. Hence, I greatly celebrate the way GFC has built communities through trust, not imposition or by searching for unrealistic goals sustained in numbers not people.

Gender justice will be achieved intersectionally not individually, if we can rebuild the web of life through an individual and, most importantly, collective acknowledgment. Gender justice should be anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchy, defeat adult-centrism and be guided by childhood and youth.

I once heard that a good leader allows others to do better, and I live my leadership focusing on what I can share with others. I consider it fair to spread knowledge like a bird that sheds seeds on its way, like grandfather Tz’ikin taught me since my birth.

I will forever thank the life, the fight, the work and the love.

Thank you life, thank you Asociación SERniña and thank you GFC.