The need for change

By Milena S. Murta

After being encouraged to take a look at Duncan Green’s blog (http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=4413) and getting to know the “Saving for change” project that has been developed in poor countries of Africa, I immediately made a connection with another brilliant project that has been developed in the Peruvian Amazon, which I had the pleasure to meet one of the co-founders last year: Eliana Elías.

But before getting into this project, I first would like to reflect about the need for change that strongly beats in hearts like Eliana’s and Duncan’s. Aren’t they also positive deviants? If so, then how to multiply positive deviants? Is it possible? I guess the challenge here is how to perpetuate the social justice feeling all over the world. If the need for change can inspire some people to lead astounding initiatives like that, we can influence all the other ones…but then…then there won’t be deviants! That can be confusing at a first glance, but it is not.

These projects are some examples. And let me talk a little about Minga Perú and its Eliana Elías. Eliana was the one that, with her husband, established, in 1998, the “Minga Perú”, a non governmental organization that seeks to improve the lives of people living in the Peruvian Amazon – one of the poorest, most inaccessible and most neglected regions in Peru. According to Eliana, ‘Minga’ in the local language means ‘collaborative community work’, and Minga’s interventions are consciously guided by a participatory communication framework. 

I’ve met Eliana in Dr. Singhal’s communication and healthy community’s class last semester. She was our guest speaker on one of those evenings. With a map, Eliana showed us the Peruvian Amazon and vented: “When you tell people about Amazon, the first thing they think is that kind of green carpet, with lots of trees. But you need to look through it. There are people living there and in hard life conditions”, she explained.

Once she moved to Amazon, Eliana observed that where nobody could reach, or in regions where it was really difficult to access, the radio did. The radio was a means to people listen to their voices, to feel with someone else. So, she has had the idea of creating the radio program “Bienvenida Salud” which is now 12 years on air. “For some of them, the radio program was the first time people were listening to their language, their voices. We were giving them the right of making part of the public sphere” she said. The program is based on letters that people, especially women write. They just decode the messages these women send to them. Through the program, the organization can alert women from reproductive health, sexual rights, gender equality, violence and others

            I just think that now, projects like this are positive deviants, but if we could multiply them all…in the future, they won’t be deviants anymore…because the “normality” would be to be positive. This is my hope.

More about Minga Peru: 

http://www.mingaperu.org/ (under construction)

http://ajws.org/where_we_work/americas/peru/minga_peru.html