1 COLOMBIA DEVELOPMENTAL EVALUATION REPORT COMPLEXITY – AWARE MONITORING AND EVALUATION THIRD ITERATION JUNE 2019 This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by Democracy International, Inc. under Contract No. AID-OAA-I-15-00017, Order No. AID-514-TO-17-00010. 2 Submitted to: USAID/Colombia Prepared by: Democracy International, Inc. Colombia Contractor: Democracy International, Inc. 7600 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 1010 Bethesda, MD 20814 Tel: 301-961-1660 www.democracyinternational.com 3 Table of Contents ACRONYMS 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 EVALUATION SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY 5 FINDINGS 6 PROJECT-LEVEL OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS (Q1) 6 EFFECTS OF CONTEXT (QS 2 AND 3) 8 CONSTRUCTIVE REFLECTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 9 PROGRAMMATIC RECOMMENDATIONS 9 STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY 10 INTRODUCTION 10 EVALUATION SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY 13 EVALUATION SCOPE 13 METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGY 14 DEVELOPMENTAL EVALUATION OF THE RECONCILIATION ACTIVITY 17 PROJECT-LEVEL OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS (Q1) 17 ECONOMIC HARDSHIP 19 INTER-COMMUNITY CONFLICT AT STATE-FUNDED HOUSING 31 MEMORY RECONSTRUCTION 36 SUMMARY FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 38 CONTEXT ANALYSIS: TRENDS, RISKS, AND CONSEQUENCES FOR INTERVENTION AND RESULTS (Q2 & Q3)46 THE CONTEXT FOR ANALYSIS IN CAQUETÁ 46 CONTEXT FACTORS AFFECTING IMPLEMENTATION [Q2] 47 IMAGINARIOS AND POPULATION GROUPS: INDIGENOUS AND YOUTH CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION 47 CROSS-CUTTING CONTEXTUAL PROBLEMS THAT AFFECT IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS [Q2 AND Q3] 49 GENDER-BASED INEQUALITY AND VIOLENCE 50 CONTEXT FACTORS AFFECTING RESULTS [Q3] 52 IMPACTS OF THE PROCESS OF STIGMATIZATION AND THE PRESENCE OF ARMED GROUPS 52 THE CONTEXT FOR ANALYSIS IN THE CARIBBEAN REGION 54 CROSS-CUTTING CONTEXTUAL PROBLEMS THAT AFFECT IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS [Q2 AND Q3] 54 INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS: FRAGMENTED GOVERNANCE 54 INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS: LACK OF PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE 55 YOUTH VULNERABILITY 57 GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE AND INEQUALITY 61 CONSTRUCTIVE REFLECTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 64 PROGRAMMATIC RECOMMENDATIONS 64 STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY 66 THEORY OF CHANGE RECOMMENDATIONS 67 APPENDIX 1. PROJECTS INCLUDED IN THIS DEVELOPMENTAL EVALUATION 70 APPENDIX 2. REFERENCES 72 4 ACRONYMS AMEP Activity Monitoring and Evaluation Plan ARN Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization CAD Centros de Atención Integral CAME Complexity-Aware Monitoring and Evaluation CEA Consejo de Empresas Americanas CGSM Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta DANE Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística DE Developmental Evaluation DI Democracy International DNP Departamento Nacional de Planeación DPS Social Prosperity Department ELN Ejército de Liberación Nacional ETCR Territorial Spaces of Capacity-building and Reintegration FARC Revoluationary Armed Forces of Colombia FGD Focus Group Discussion GIZ Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GOC Government of Colombia GSI Gender and Social Inclusion INDEPAZ Institute for Development and Peace IRCA Índice de Riesgo de la Calidad del Agua para Consumo Humano LGBTQI Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex NGO Non-Governmental Organization PAR Program of Alliances for Reconciliation RUV Registro Único de Victimas SSI Semi-Structured Interviews TOC Theory of Change UARIV Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas UNESCO United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UNHCR United Nations High Commission on Refugees USAID United States Agency for International Development 5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Developmental Evaluation (DE) of the Program of Alliances for Reconciliation (PAR) “Reconciliation Activity” is a long-term, iterative process that Democracy International (DI) conducts under its Complexity￾Aware Monitoring and Evaluation Project (C-AME). PAR aims to promote trust, respect, empowerment, and dialogue, seen in its theory of change as drivers of the overall goal of reconciliation. The PAR program generates these drivers through “transformative alliances” – public-private-partnerships with a “reconciliation focus” that produce (1) increased social and economic opportunities, such as avenues for political participation, cultural inclusion, and employment; (2) greater awareness that everyone has a role to play in reconciliation; and (3) improved reconciliation abilities – a catchall term for constructive, nonviolent behaviors that increase the likelihood of positive interactions between people and communities. C-AME supports reflection on PAR’s practices, processes, challenges, and successes, as well as those of organizations whom PAR activities influence directly and through whom PAR interventions may indirectly affect beneficiary attitudes and behaviors with respect to reconciliation. In this report, DI presents findings, conclusions, and constructive recommendations gathered in the process of conducting a targeted, semi￾annual assessment of select PAR activities. EVALUATION SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY This report synthesizes the meaningful observations, data gathering, and results of mixed-method analyses that we have completed to date and leverages this body of work to address three primary questions about the Reconciliation Activity: 1. What is considered working and not working (and by whom) as the intervention unfolds? 2. How is the Reconciliation Activity connected to and affected by the wider context? 3. How and why do contextual factors influence results and what are the trends in the wider context? The next section “unpacks” meaning in the evaluation questions and places geographic, and group boundaries around them to hone the analysis and increase its relevance to programming. C-AME focused on Caribbean and Orinoquia/Amazon regions to conduct the DE, and selected eight projects1 according to selection criteria that included scope of the project, status of implementation, and a geographic distribution of at least one project per municipality or community. C-AME examined the national and local context, in parallel with project-level analyses, under the assumption that project implementation and performance is affected by wider contextual factors. C-AME collected primary data from 102 PAR beneficiaries, implementing partners, and stakeholders through individual and group semi-structured interviews (SSI) and focus groups discussions (FGD). C-AME conducted 11 FGDs and 35 SSIs; 11 FGDs and 11 SSIs were conducted with PAR beneficiaries and implementing partners; and the remaining 24 SSIs were conducted with other stakeholders. Finally, C-AME used secondary data sources2 to analyze local contexts. 1 See the projects included in this DE in Appendix 1. 2 C-AME compiled national and local level data from the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE), Colombian National Police, Departamento Nacional de Planeación (DNP), Ministry of Health and Social Protection, Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas (UARIV), INDEPAZ, Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, National Institute of Health, Defensoría del Pueblo, Alcaldía del Municipio de Sitionuevo, FILCO￾Ministerio de Trabajo and Gobernación del Magdalena. 6 C-AME analyzed demographic, socio-economic, and security data to characterize and further analyze PAR’s implementation environment and used this data to highlight possible contingencies that may restrict the scope of its work. FINDINGS PROJECT-LEVEL OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS (Q1) For the sake of brevity and legibility, C-AME presents findings and observations at the intersection of two dimensions: primary project problem area and main beneficiary type. We have identified three types of problem areas in the eight cases addressed in this report: (1) economic hardship; (2) intercommunity conflict in state-funded urban housing projects; and (3) dealing with the past. This typology emerged from C-AME’s analysis of projects, as they seem to naturally group under these categories. Grouping projects, allows C-AME to provide recommendations by project type (see Table 1) and will further enhance the learning process. Table 1. Typology of projects selected for this developmental evaluation. Main Beneficiary Type Primary Problem Area YOUTH WOMEN COMMUNITIES Economic Hardship ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITES Creation of spaces for peaceful coexistence, reconciliation and economic empowerment for young people in the fishing areas of Ciénaga (Ciénaga) TOURISM Youth with Invigorating Cultural Entrepreneurial Endeavors (Cartagena) ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITIES Women's social and economic leadership in Cartagena (Cartagena) Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá (San Vicente del Caguán & Cartagena del Chairá) TOURISM Strengthen the value chain of tourism and ecotourism in Ciénaga and Nueva Venecia (Nueva Venecia & Ciénaga) Passion Caquetá: Reconciliation and economic inclusion through community-based tourism in the Manantial reserve (Florencia) Inter-community conflict at state￾funded housing Strengthening of transformation and youth communications skills for development and reconciliation in Ciudad Equidad (Santa Marta) Weaving territories of peace, memory and reconciliation. Empowerment of youth and women of Florencia as agents of change and reconciliation (Florencia) Weaving territories of peace, memory and reconciliation. Empowerment of youth and women of Florencia as agents of change and reconciliation (Florencia) -- Dealing with the Past Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá (Cartagena del Chairá) Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá (San Vicente del Caguán & Cartagena del Chairá) -- Economic Hardship – Youth and Women 7 Three of the evaluated activities are carrying out interventions designed to improve economic opportunities for youth and women. Participants benefitted from the food security afforded by small, urban gardens, learned about medicinal plants and lost traditional practices, and learned scaling and business skills to apply in the future. However, some beneficiaries faced the challenges of low garden productivity, a disconnect between demand for products and the offerings of a local market representing a breakdown in the agricultural value chain, and issues around unreliable land tenure. Some participants in entrepreneurship activities were limited by a lack of access to credit, and dropped out of the project due to the long timeframe between the start of the project and reliable income generation. Participants who took part in psychosocial support elements of these activities reported feeling empowered to undertake entrepreneurship opportunities and having an improved perception of themselves and their communities. However, sustainable results seem to be challenged by socioeconomic factors restricting participation of some especially vulnerable youth and female, and by the precarious financing available to many of the target entrepreneurs. Economic Hardship – Tourism Three of the PAR interventions evaluated this cycle include specific strategies to improve economic opportunities among youth and communities through tourism endeavors. These projects seek to develop ecological, cultural and/or community-based touristic ventures involving vulnerable populations with the expectation of improving their economic opportunities through integration into the tourism value chain of the territory. Three aspects of this undertaking merit examination: the core theme of the endeavor (i.e. ecological, cultural and/or community-based), economic opportunities, and tourism. Understanding the interplay of these efforts is critical to assessing project outcomes. Colombia’s tourism industry has been growing in the past years and a contributing factor has been the improvement of security conditions; this growth of the tourist industry has produced important economic and social impacts that vary across locations. Whereas there is an increased demand for novelty touristic products, that also raises the challenge of improving economic development while also protecting cultural diversity and ancestral practices, ecological values, and communities delivering products and services. That is, this type of tourism needs to ensure cultural adequacy and social and environmental responsibility while also focusing on improving the livelihoods of vulnerable communities that are at the center of the tourism ventures. Intercommunity Conflict in State-funded Urban Housing Projects Two of the PAR interventions evaluated include specific strategies to address community conflict at state￾funding housing projects. Youth and women are the main beneficiary type. Young participants in one of these programs say that the skills built through the project are now changing negative narratives about the neighborhood. In this process, young people feel empowered and report they now have the tools to communicate. The implementing partner likewise perceives advances in young people’s leadership skills and their willingness to participate in community decision-making processes, such as community councils. At present, youth are engaged in activities such as coordinating youth centers, taking care of the space, and managing the security of audiovisual materials. Additionally, youth have managed to engage with their neighborhoods by holding public events, such as theater productions, traveling art exhibitions, and collecting memories of conflict from previous generations in the territory. The partner perceives that the methodological guides of DecidoSer promote spaces of respect between women and young people, enabling women to express pain caused by the armed conflict. DecidoSer was significant insofar as it allowed the partner to update their tools with playful pedagogies that complemented 8 their interventions. The partner maintains that the methodological guides of DecidoSer are a conglomeration of actions they were already carrying out. Participants expressed their enhanced understanding and higher levels of respect for others, improved skills for dialogue, and, with their new communication skills, a renewed sense of empowerment. Despite multiple obstacles participants face on a daily basis, they say they now have the capability to develop a life plan that will eventually improve living conditions for both themselves and their current or future children. In addition, some of the participants report improvements in their interactions with their families. Dealing with the Past One PAR intervention evaluated this cycle includes specific strategies of youth and women for dealing with the past, given their experiences during the armed conflict. The advancement of women’s empowerment under the project is evident not only in agricultural productivity, but also in the changes in gender dynamics in relationships. To continue advancing with reconciliation and to participate successfully in politics and local development, female beneficiaries stated that they must bolster their project design skills as well as their knowledge of agriculture regulations. They noted that the project helped them hone skills in personal and community contexts, but more time is needed to acquire the higher levels of confidence required to obtain and exercise influence in political decision-making. For the partners and beneficiaries, the primary achievement was the empowerment of women not only in terms of food sovereignty, but also in terms of social rights, especially in San Vicente del Caguán, where participants established a municipal board of women as a space for them to discuss politics and gender￾based violence prevention. In the two target municipalities, there has been a recognizable change in narratives corresponding to the distribution of domestic tasks among different family members. The women said that they had made progress in dispelling the universalizing narratives that assert that women may hold one of two roles: housewife or maid. EFFECTS OF CONTEXT (QS 2 AND 3) CAQUETA C-AME identified a series of contextual trends and risks that affect implementation and/or results. In the case of Caquetá, these context factors include: 1. Strong imaginarios3 among indigenous and youth population groups, which affect implementation; 2. Gender-based inequality and violence, which affect both implementation and program results; and 3. Stigmatization of communities in which PAR operates due to threats to human rights defenders and continued presence of armed groups, which affects results. CARIBBEAN REGION C-AME identified the following contextual trends that affect implementation and/or results in the Caribbean region: 3 In regards to the Reconciliation Activity, we believe imaginarios broadly reflects “culture, social ties, and beliefs” and will use this phrase whenever referring to the Spanish language concept of imaginarios. 9 1. The institutional issue of fragmented governance and lack of public infrastructure affect implementation and results; 2. Youth vulnerability affects implementation and results; and 3. Gender-based inequality and violence affects implementation and results. CONSTRUCTIVE REFLECTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS PROGRAMMATIC RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Develop strategies to address “connector” problems Findings from this developmental evaluation suggest that “connector problems” limit PAR’s capacity to achieve the ultimate goal of the reconciliation activity, “Colombians taking action to strengthen reconciliation.” Examples of how connector problems affect reconciliation include how socioeconomic factors restrict youth’s ability to participate fully and consistently in project activities, and communities isolated from urban centers have difficulty improving economic development due to limited state presence and situations of violence. PAR and its partner have carried out an important effort to develop strategic alliances to improve economic and social opportunities for project beneficiaries. However, PAR should continue developing alliances with public and private organizations that develop institutional capacities to address these “connector problems”. Initiatives trying to address: • Economic hardship could develop alliances that allow participants to continue accessing technical assistance and obtain individual financial support while enterprise projects reach financial balance or workforce training is completed. Potential collaborators include in this area include but are not limited to the National Training Service (SENA), local chambers of commerce, and public economic development offices, through strategies like subsidies for participants engaged in entrepreneurial programs, support to access microloans, and other financial services for vulnerable populations. For communities facing lack of public infrastructure, PAR could identify alternatives in national policies to address problems of access to public goods and services, identify paths to send specific requests to national, regional, and local governments (citizen empowerment). • Projects implemented in state-funded housing locations could collaborate with local partners to identify security concerns, develop strategies to address inner community coexistence, and identify local allies and community members to change negative stereotypes about certain populations, and address problems related to the normalization of violence. Partners for these initiatives could include mayor's offices of security and coexistence, and specialized Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). • Projects that deal with the past find important national allies with local presence, like the National Center for Historic Memory (a current PAR partner), local NGOs, and organizations of victims. 2. Continue working with beneficiaries, implementing partners, and stakeholders to increase awareness of gender disparities Both beneficiaries and partners continue to use patriarchal language in their discussion of women and gender issues, such that female beneficiaries interviewed expressed their discomfort at participating in the activities together with members from the opposite gender. PAR should continue working to address and 10 increase gender sensitivity among implementing partners. While PAR is aware of this connector problem, C￾AME notes that strategies to change the social dimensions of reconciliation must intervene in the beneficiary sphere as well as the partner’s. C-AME recommends again that PAR extend the scope (number of activities) of the Gender and Social Inclusion strategy, not only among participants, but also among their relatives and community members. This will maintain and improve PAR’s efforts to increase awareness about gender equality and diversity among beneficiaries and surrounding community members, and thereby contribute to increasing women’s empowerment and their capacity to engage in project implementation (i.e. more time available outside of the home). STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY 1. Identify strategies to implement the Reconciliation approach beyond the direct participants in the implementation. PAR has done well at including the Reconciliation Approach in its interventions. However, there is a concern about participants’ families and close network members being unable to engage in the psychosocial support activities. Engaging other actors is critical for the improvement of social opportunities, which is essential for constructing reconciliation. PAR could accomplish this by extending the implementation of the Reconciliation Approach among non-PAR beneficiaries with ties to project participants. 2. Increase awareness of the non-economic values of culture, communities, and the environment in tourism ventures. For interventions focused on improving economic opportunity through tourism, PAR could include training on the specific non-economic values of culture, communities, and the environment to improve the social sustainability of these ventures, especially among vulnerable populations. 3. Determine strategies to empower communities to trust and hold their government accountable. It is important to encourage and empower communities to hold their government accountable for responding to their needs. Colombian regulation since the 1991 Constitution has encouraged social control of public investment. PAR could use this regulatory framework to encourage current or new social organizations to participate in the accountability process of publicly funded projects implemented locally, or to engage in civic actions locally, including obtaining government support, after PAR’s intervention. INTRODUCTION Under its contract with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Democracy International (DI) is responsible for conducting the Complexity-Aware Monitoring and Evaluation (C-AME) project for the USAID/Colombia Reconciliation Activity - PAR (Programa de Alianzas para la Reconciliacion) implemented by ACDI/VOCA. Here we present the results of the third developmental evaluation, a critical result of the C-AME activity. The developmental evaluation is a systematic effort to track and analyze the results that emerge under conditions of complexity, documenting and interpreting the dynamics, 11 interactions, and interdependencies that occur during the implementation period of the Reconciliation Activity. Under this initiative, and per the contract with USAID, DI aims to inform adaptive management of the Reconciliation Activity throughout its lifecycle, as well as inform lessons learned that will be applicable after the project comes to an end. The Reconciliation Activity, meanwhile, aims to enhance the capacity of both the Government of Colombia (GOC) and civil society to strengthen and build reconciliation processes by fostering trust and tolerance among beneficiaries. Dismantling the aggressor/victim dynamic and narratives is essential if the Reconciliation Activity is to achieve its mission of reintegrating ex-combatants and providing support and services to victims of violence during the conflict. C-AME supports reflection on PAR’s practices, processes, challenges, and successes, as well as those of organizations that PAR activities influence directly and through which PAR interventions may indirectly affect beneficiary attitudes and behaviors with respect to reconciliation. To this end, C-AME aims to provide supplemental information and analysis through its ongoing evaluation and monitoring activities and periodic reports. The iterative process of collecting and analyzing supplemental data, reflecting on its relevance to programming, and sharing findings and recommendations with USAID and its implementing partners is developmental evaluation. These efforts are summarized semiannually in C-AME’s Developmental Evaluation Report. This third Developmental Evaluation Report reflects data collected from January-May 2019 and builds upon the results and recommendations provided in the second Developmental Evaluation (December 2018) to expand on its approach and deepen the analysis of lessons learned and recommendations for areas of opportunity. As explained in prior iterations, developmental evaluation is concerned primarily with learning, not with accountability. The iterative process aims to identify meaningful lessons and unique perspectives that would not otherwise surface using traditional monitoring and evaluation approaches. Thus, answers we provide to those questions are neither definitive nor broadly generalizable, but can provide useful information through the implementation process. Similarly, developmental evaluations can enhance learning in “complex” situations that are characterized by high uncertainty surrounding a problem and disagreement over how to address it, as in the current environment in Colombia. The Reconciliation Activity can benefit from a flexible learning and evaluation approach because of its distinctive characteristics. PAR seeks to generate changes in the attitudes and practices of diverse actors who live in disparate territories throughout Colombia. On one hand, PAR interventions involve trial, error, and adaptation insofar as beneficiaries’ unique backgrounds and their environs may condition outcomes. On the other hand, the historical, geopolitical, and social contexts of each territory where PAR operates can and do influence the successes PAR activities can achieve. Moreover, contexts change over the course of implementation: the Venezuelan population influx, and the varied challenges that develop in response to it, are prime examples of this. The Reconciliation Activity is therefore not a “one-size-fits-all” development program. Developmental evaluation may support PAR in several ways, such as identifying strategic lines of inquiry, presaging unanticipated roadblocks in implementation, floating alternative causal explanations, and suggesting promising paths of intervention to project implementers that account for trends or changes in context. 12 The structure of this document is as follows: Section 1 presents the scope and methodology applied for this developmental evaluation; Section 2 details the results of this developmental evaluation, broken into two sub-sections—first, project-level observations and analysis and second, context analysis, highlighting the effects of the context on PAR interventions and results; and Section 3 concludes the report with recommendations and constructive reflections. Finally, this report includes three appendices containing additional details about the data analysis, tables, and references. 13 EVALUATION SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY This report synthesizes the meaningful observations, data gathering, and results of the mixed-method analyses that we have completed to date and leverages this body of work to address three primary questions about the Reconciliation Activity: 1. What is considered working and not working (and by whom) as the intervention unfolds? 2. How is the Reconciliation Activity connected to and affected by the wider context? 3. How and why do contextual factors influence results and what are the trends in the wider context? The next section “unpacks” meaning in the evaluation questions and places geographic and group boundaries around them to hone the analysis and increase its relevance to programming. Evaluation Scope Field data collection and analysis for this developmental evaluation are limited to territories in the municipalities PAR, USAID, and C-AME have prioritized for study, and which are, or will be, sites for PAR activities. The municipalities selected for this developmental evaluation are located in two of the six regions of PAR’s focus: Caribbean and Orinoquia/Amazon (Figure 1). In the Caribbean region, C-AME conducted fieldwork in Cartagena (Bolívar), Ciénaga and Santa Marta (Magdalena). In the case of Ciénaga, one of the target projects is located in the village of Nueva Venecia, municipality of Sitionuevo (Magdalena). Due to the geographic location and administrative situation (details will be provided in the analysis section), PAR considers this municipality to be one of their Ciénaga interventions. In the Orinoquia/Amazon region, C-AME conducted fieldwork in the municipalities of Cartagena del Chairá, Florencia, and San Vicente del Caguán in the department of Caquetá. From now on, in this document we will refer to this region as Caquetá. Based on PAR’s project-level learning priorities, DI collected primary data from eight projects across these municipalities. Two of the selected projects have interventions in two different locations. In Ciénaga, the project “Strengthen the Value Chain of Tourism and Ecotourism in Ciénaga” is being implemented in the core urban area of Ciénaga and the village of Nueva Venecia; and in Caquetá, and the project ”Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá” is being implemented in two different municipalities: Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán. (Annex 1. List of municipalities and projects selected for Developmental Evaluation). Figure 1. Geographic Scope 14 C-AME selected these projects for examination in coordination with PAR for this evaluation cycle. C-AME used the following criteria for project selection, and gathered project information data from the list provided by PAR to C-AME of projects in MONITOR, the Missionwide M&E tool used by USAID/Colombia. 1. Scope: To ensure that the group of projects selected for this evaluation cycle allow C-AME to evaluate the three results of PAR’s results framework: (1) Improved capacity for developing truth￾telling and memory mechanisms; (2) Awareness and mobilization increased through inclusive initiatives; (3) Local reconciliation initiatives strengthened through public-private alliances. 2. Implementation status: Project selection by DI first took place at a group exercise on January 22, 2019. At this stage, C-AME ensured that the local projects selected were active at the time of the selection date. If municipalities selected did not have active projects at the time, C-AME identified projects that were active during a time close to the selection date. After preliminary identification, C-AME and PAR met during the first week of February to revise the list of projects. PAR agreed upon the list of projects provided by C-AME. 3. Number of projects per municipality: At least one project per target municipality. METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGY C-AME developed data collection and analysis tools to examine the national and local context, in parallel with project-level analyses under the assumption that the wider contextual factors affected the project implementation and performance. Understanding the highly nuanced dynamic of each region of Colombia allows C-AME to draw preliminary conclusions about what works and does not work as the intervention unfolds. Triangulating results across all cases (Q1) and analyses of contexts (Q2 and Q3) allows C-AME to formulate meaningful lessons learned and recommendations that PAR may wish to consider in future interventions. C-AME collected primary data from PAR beneficiaries, implementing partners, and stakeholders in the municipalities and from corresponding PAR projects through individual and group semi-structured interviews (SSI) and focus groups discussions (FGD) (Figure 2). During the fieldwork stage, C-AME conducted a total of 46 qualitative data collection activities (11 FGDs and 35 SSIs); 11 FGDs and 11 SSIs were conducted among PAR beneficiaries and implementing partners and the remaining 24 SSIs with other stakeholders from the two regions selected for this DE. One-hundred and two individuals participated in the evaluation process. 15 Figure 2. Summary of primary data collected by C-AME (by data collection technique and source types) In addition, C-AME used secondary data sources to analyze local contexts. C-AME compiled national and local level data from the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE), Colombian National Police, Departamento Nacional de Planeación (DNP), Ministry of Health and Social Protection, Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas (UARIV), Institute for Development and Peace (INDEPAZ), Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, National Institute of Health, Defensoría del Pueblo, Alcaldía del Municipio de Sitionuevo, FILCO-Ministerio de Trabajo and Gobernación del Magdalena. C-AME also used reports and studies conducted by Colombian and foreign think tanks and research institutions. C￾AME also conducted ongoing monitoring of local news and media sources to identify significant trends and events present in the relevant locations and that could potentially affect PAR implementation and results. C-AME analyzed demographic, socio-economic, and security data to characterize and further analyze PAR’s implementation environment and used this data to highlight possible contingencies that may restrict the scope of its work. C-AME applied textual statistical analysis procedures to its unique databases of beneficiary, implementing partner, and stakeholder narratives to systematically examine interviews and identify key themes to develop a method for coding the data. Field team members observed and collected useful data on site to characterize the dynamics of reconciliation, key actors, relationships, conflicts of interest and other elements that facilitate understanding the environment in which PAR is operating. We used NVivo 11 and T-lab to organize and to conduct the first level of primary data analysis (text analysis and text mining). These two programs allow for the construction of databases with different types of discursive information, as well as the incorporation of useful text analysis procedures for the exploration of interviews. Using the results from the second developmental evaluation, the team was able to predetermine codes for the analysis: reconciliation approach; differential approaches; and sustainability. Predetermined codes are the entry point for the data analysis. To identify emergent themes in the data, the team used the results from NVivo 11 as the baseline to identify themes within the data for further human coding. Using these tools for data analysis, C-AME team explored relationships between categories and concepts, to further identify learning experiences and formulate recommendations for improvement. When developmental evaluations help implementers to identify patterns, integrate new information, and analyze and consider the implications of what they are seeing and doing, this is called “sense-making.” 16 Because developmental evaluation scrutinizes closed and ongoing projects, insights are not only valid if they result from formal analysis. As such, C-AME relies on formal analysis as well as observations and educated hunches as the basis for learning and recommendations. 17 DEVELOPMENTAL EVALUATION OF THE RECONCILIATION ACTIVITY This section presents the results of primary and secondary data collection and analysis addressing the core questions of this developmental evaluation. We describe and analyze the eight PAR interventions in six municipalities (implementation takes place in seven different locations) C-AME visited during this evaluation period to address Question 1: What is considered working and not working (and by whom) as the intervention unfolds? Our response to Question 2 (How is the Reconciliation Activity connected to and affected by the wider context?) details and analyzes significant contextual factors from the local levels that affect Reconciliation Activity implementation, while our response to Question 3 (How and why do contextual factors influence results and what are the trends in the wider context?) examines local context factors that influence Reconciliation Activity results. Our presentation strategy is to first present our project-level analysis in response to Question 1, and then to group and address Questions 2 and 3 together, in the same sub-section on context. This has several advantages: it limits unnecessary and semantically problematic disconnections between how PAR is “connected to” context and how it is “influenced by” context; it allows us to present all levels of context fluidly and in relation to the projects we have studied this cycle; and it enables us to draw on project-level findings as examples of how these issues concretely affect PAR projects. PROJECT-LEVEL OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS (Q1) We analyzed C-AME interviews and focus group discussions with PAR implementing partners and beneficiaries regarding their participation in the Reconciliation Activity interventions at the local level. For brevity and cogency, this section presents our major insights at the intersection of two dimensions: primary project problem area and main beneficiary type. This permits us to properly address the results of and influences on projects that work with multiple beneficiary groups and, likewise, to explore patterns across projects that target similar objectives. In addition, C-AME acknowledges three cross-sectional elements for the analysis: psychosocial support through the Reconciliation Approach (RA) (DecidoSer and Gender and Inclusion Strategy), differentiated approaches applied in the intervention, and sustainability. Table 2 presents this typography of PAR projects that we analyzed for this DE. These dimensions were not imposed by C-AME, but rather became apparent following the desk review of the project files. “Main beneficiary type” reflects target beneficiaries’ main sociodemographic or organizational traits. In the projects C-AME evaluated for this Developmental Evaluation, there are four beneficiary groups: youth, women, and community—formally organized and informal. Group was determined by PAR’s identification of target population on each project’s profile documentation. “Primary project problem area” refers to the main problem each PAR intervention is trying to address. All PAR interventions share common traits (i.e. local partners’ strategy, gender and social inclusion, and psychosocial support); however, critical problem areas are apparent and vary across interventions. We have identified three types of problem areas in the eight cases addressed in this report: (1) economic hardship; (2) intercommunity conflict in state-funded urban housing projects; and (3) dealing with the past. This typology emerged from C-AME’s analysis of projects as they seem to naturally group under these categories. Grouping projects this way allows C-AME to provide recommendations by project type and will further enhance the learning process. Next, we will describe how C-AME understands each problem area and their alignment with the PAR theory of change (TOC). 18 First, economic hardship is understood here as “the difficulty caused by having too little money or too few resources.” One assumption under the PAR TOC is that one of the limitations to building reconciliation is the lack of economic opportunities among some of its beneficiaries. Therefore, the TOC suggests that PAR should promote transformative alliances that boost economic (and social) opportunities for individuals and communities that are facing economic hardship in order to create the conditions necessary for reconciliation. The second problem area identified in this developmental evaluation refers to intercommunity conflict in state-funded urban housing projects. Some of PAR’s interventions take place in state-funded urban housing projects, where there are persistent problems of conflict among community members. In the cases analyzed for this report, the nature of the conflict seems to be primarily rooted in the variety of and differences among populations sponsored to live together in these types of housing complexes (e.g. victims, reintegrated persons, displaced populations), as well as the high levels of persistent poverty and weaknesses in social structures. The PAR TOC assumes that improved reconciliation abilities, which can be measured through enhanced skills for non-violent conflict resolution, is a step towards reconciliation. Table 2. Typology of projects selected for this developmental evaluation. Main Beneficiary Type Primary Problem Area YOUTH WOMEN COMMUNITIES Economic Hardship ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITES Creation of spaces for peaceful coexistence, reconciliation and economic empowerment for young people in the fishing areas of Ciénaga (Ciénaga) TOURISM Youth with Invigorating Cultural Entrepreneurial Endeavors (Cartagena) ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITIES Women's social and economic leadership in Cartagena (Cartagena) Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá (San Vicente del Caguán & Cartagena del Chairá) TOURISM Strengthen the value chain of tourism and ecotourism in Ciénaga and Nueva Venecia (Nueva Venecia & Ciénaga) Passion Caquetá: Reconciliation and economic inclusion through community-based tourism in the Manantial reserve (Florencia) Inter-community conflict at state￾funded housing Strengthening of transformation and youth communications skills for development and reconciliation in Ciudad Equidad (Santa Marta) Weaving territories of peace, memory and reconciliation. Empowerment of youth and women of Florencia as agents of change and reconciliation (Florencia) Weaving territories of peace, memory and reconciliation. Empowerment of youth and women of Florencia as agents of change and reconciliation (Florencia) -- Dealing with the Past Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá (Cartagena del Chairá) Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá (San Vicente del Caguán & Cartagena del Chairá) -- 19 Cross-sectional components - Psychosocial support (Reconciliation Approach: DecidoSer and Gender and Inclusion Strategy) - Differential approaches when working with beneficiaries - Sustainability Finally, the problem area dealing with the past acknowledges that many of the PAR beneficiaries have not yet been able to heal the emotional wounds from their experiences during the armed conflict. The PAR TOC also assumes that “if local reconciliation initiatives are supported and communities are empowered to address grievances associated with the conflict and the transition to peace, then communities will have the capacity to mitigate potential conflicts and actively advance reconciliation.” Projects targeting this problem area have been developed and implemented in response to this assumption. ECONOMIC HARDSHIP In order to address economic hardship, PAR’s TOC states that the Reconciliation Activity will promote public-private partnerships and alliances that are “transformative” insofar as they generate economic and social opportunities while attending to psychosocial needs of beneficiary groups. Specific elements of these opportunities vary; however, often they seek to increase employment and/or promote entrepreneurship. During this evaluation cycle, C-AME identified interventions that target youth and women as beneficiaries for improving economic opportunities. In addition, there are economic development interventions targeted at youth and communities with a specific focus on tourism; given the specific traits of these interventions, this report includes a section for them. YOUTH AND WOMEN INITIATIVES: ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITIES Economic Components Three of the PAR interventions evaluated include specific strategies to improve economic opportunities with youth and/or women. They are Women’s Social and Economic Leadership in Cartagena, implemented by Minuto de Dios Foundation (November 2018 – November 2019); Creation of Spaces for Peaceful Coexistence, Reconciliation and Economic Empowerment for Young People in the Fishing Areas of Ciénaga implemented by FUNDEMICROMAG foundation (August 2017 – November 2019); and Cultivating Peace Through the Improvement of Living Conditions of 340 Families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá, implemented by CORPOMANIGUA (December 2017 – May 2019). Most of the interventions examined in this evaluation cycle target women and youth. In Cartagena, the project implemented by Minuto de Dios seeks to improve the socioeconomic conditions of 150 women who are victims of the conflict in Locality 3 in the city of Cartagena. Through the implementation of productive initiatives based on participants’ abilities, it is expected that the project will contribute to generating additional income for women and increase their participation in reconciliation processes. In Ciénaga, the project implemented by FUNDEMICROMAG aims to enhance socio-economic development and conditions for peaceful coexistence of young people living in the fishing zone of that municipality, based on the development of two business models that allow them to improve their incomes. The two business models are XENZA, a beauty salon created by the women and one person from the LGBTI community participating in the project; and SOLUTEAM, an outboard motors repair business that is in the process of consolidating and was created by men participating in the project. In Caquetá region, the CORPOMANIGUA project aims to improve food security, economic inclusion, and territorial peace 20 building through the strengthening of family farming and agricultural productive chains and the creation of scenarios for reconciliation with 340 peasant families, victims of armed conflict and/or those living in conditions of vulnerability in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá, Regarding the improvement of livelihood conditions for project participants, beneficiaries from the CORPOMANIGUA project recognize that the planting of urban gardens has allowed them to have small trading amongst neighbors, primarily of vegetables, greens, and medicinal plants. Even though they do not produce enough to generate large revenues or commercialize the produce on a larger-scale, the women indicated that the produce still helped their family’s income by allowing them to save on groceries. Participants in the Minuto de Dios project report improved understanding of what a business is and the process of becoming an entrepreneur. Participants assert they had the business ideas and the skills they needed, but Minuto de Dios is providing the theoretical knowledge they require to improve their enterprises. Beneficiaries from FUNDEMICROMAG also report increased business knowledge and progress on their business models. Up to date, XENZA, the women-owned business, has launched activities and is currently open to the public, whereas SOLUTEAM is still awaiting to finalize paperwork and the development of partnerships to enter the outboard motors market. According to women participating in the “Cultivating Peace” project in Cartagena del Chairá, main achievements include learning about production techniques to grow organic agrochemical-free produce, which was an expected project outcome. The women identified that the bolstering of home gardens contributes to peace and to rescuing lost traditional practices, as well as offers an opportunity to switch from coca production to other agricultural products for self-consumption. In San Vicente del Caguán, participants highlight that due to the intervention they now acknowledge the value of medicinal plants for producing essential oils and medicinal pillows, expressing a desire to work towards larger-scale production of these items in the future. In both implementing municipalities, CORPOMANIGUA conducted outreach to expand rural markets, sought to strengthen inter-institutional efforts to sponsor the project, and developed local networks to exchange agricultural products. The work to improve food security among families focused on women rather than youth, but through the intervention with this group in Cartagena del Chairá, young participants identified a vocational interest in silkscreen printing and prints. This business idea is outside the scope of work sponsored by PAR under this project, but offers a business idea to potentially be explored further with the same population under another initiative. Women participants from San Vicente del Caguán report low productivity levels from their vegetable gardens, limiting the possibilities for commercialization that would boost incomes as well as the possibility of providing enough produce for all of the 147 families in the neighborhood. The situation is very similar in Cartagena del Chairá, where a “Peace Shop” opened three years ago aimed at linking the productive systems of the produce gardens with the shop. Despite its strategic location, the limited productivity levels became an obstacle for the shop’s success. Project participants recommend engaging organizations from the area to support the revitalization of the shop’s activities and increasing awareness among producers and rural consumers in order to spur commercialization amongst neighbors and the broader market while maintaining prices that are sustainable for the community. Another challenge reported by beneficiaries is that they lack security of land tenure, which can affect the results given that the vegetable gardens are installed in the women’s homes. Given the probability of the business’ expansion, participants expect the municipal administration will grant them land for vegetable cultivation. It is important for PAR to acknowledge this assumption from participants since they have capacity to identify the likelihood of this through engaging in conversations with the municipal administration under their goal of developing 21 transformative alliances. Minuto de Dios’ project seeks to improve economic empowerment of women beneficiaries, through capacity building for entrepreneurship and/or seeking employment. Capacity building is an important first step towards economic empowerment and the project is, as reported by the partner and beneficiaries, building soft skills among women participants for their further engagement in entrepreneurial processes and/or for seeking employment. However, what is not clear is the project's capacity to ensure sustainability of the enterprises it promotes given the vulnerability of participants. Specialized organizations in employment and entrepreneurship (Chambers of Commerce, Colombian Public Employment Service, NGOs) have identified challenges when working with vulnerable populations to develop entrepreneurship capacity. According to these works, one of the most critical challenges participants face is the capacity to maintain their cash flow once they start their enterprise (Mwobobia, 2012). It is likely that beneficiaries will find it challenging to fully engage in business development while they also have difficulties maintaining stable access to income, as well as accessing loans to leverage their enterprises. The long-term incentive of economic empowerment faces beneficiaries' short-term financial needs. On the other hand, income generation through employment provides limited opportunities in the communities where these beneficiaries live, due to limited access to education and opportunities for workforce development. PAR and its partner have done an important effort to develop soft skills for but in the next project stages, the implementers have to make a significant effort to develop alliances with public and private organizations that allow participants to continue accessing technical assistance, financing and support while strengthening their enterprises. Potential collaborators include but are not limited to the National Training Service (SENA), local chambers of commerce, and public economic development offices. In Ciénaga, young beneficiaries from FUNDEMICROMAG face similar situations of limited access to stable and formal income, and they express concern that if income generation does not occur soon they will have to find other economic alternatives. In fact, the partner indicates that multiple participants had dropped off because they had to find alternatives for income generation to support themselves and their families. The process of creating the two enterprises under the framework of this project (men's SOLUTEAM and women's XENZA) has been somewhat challenging as expressed by both the beneficiaries and the partner. They indicate that challenges include administrative obstacles to purchase inputs, finding a location, bureaucratic burden when trying to legally form the business, and having to invest a significant amount of time when most participants still have to sustain their households. At the time of the fieldwork, SOLUTEAM had not started their activities yet. The partner states that because the market they are trying to enter is highly competitive (outboard motors) and dominated by large companies they are having difficulties finding potential customers. Beneficiaries express that these situations have created lack of trust among their family members and concern among themselves because their realization of income generation is delayed more than what they had expected initially. Regarding the operational aspects of implementation, in Cartagena del Chairá, youth consider the project implementation period too short. Staff from CORPOMANIGUA concur with young project participants regarding the implementation time given the expected project outcomes regarding economic inclusion; they would need to have additional time to work with young beneficiaries to offer business knowledge and technical support for their recently identified business idea (printings) as a strategy to improve economic inclusion of youth. This is definitively not an expected project outcome but PAR could contribute to support this business idea (if feasible) by identifying local and regional partners that can offer the type of support that this group needs. In addition, the partner asserts that there have been delays in funding disbursement from the Social Prosperity Department (DPS), another partner in this initiative, which in turn delays project activities. 22 Reconciliation and Differential Approaches The Minuto de Dios project seeks to promote behaviors and environments that strengthen emotional and mental health through individual and group interventions. All the participants interviewed by C-AME expressed that they have been victims of the armed conflict and arrived to Cartagena because they were forced to leave their places of origin. Some of them said they have been displaced more than once. Beneficiaries report they have attended DecidoSer workshops aimed at dealing with the pain produced by their experiences in the armed conflict. Project participants indicated they have seen improvements in their healing processes. Despite reported improvements in dealing with the past, beneficiaries express a distrust of government, given their experience going through the governmental system as victims. There is stigma about displaced populations, including an assumption that they have received multiple benefits from the government, which project beneficiaries assert is not the case. Nevertheless, the project diagnostics indicate that 90% of target population receive government support. This indicates that there is a prevailing lack of trust on at least two levels, first from non-victim community members towards victims, and second from victims towards the government. To promote conducive environments for improved emotional-mental health (as part of the project goal), PAR and the partner need to strengthen its work to build trust within the community and towards public institutions. Implementing DecidoSer workshops to strengthen trust that include project beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries (i.e. neighbors from the communities where beneficiaries live, public officials) could be a strategy to level-up reconciliation skills such as trust, in communities like the ones this project works at. Unlike Cartagena, Caquetá was the center of armed conflict under FARC dynamics of territorial control. As such, project participants from the CORPOMANIGUA-led project benefited from attending the DecidoSer workshops. The partner notes that DecidoSer addressed areas such as family routines and neighborly relationships and adjusted the methodology to make it relevant to agricultural themes. As a result, the partner reports, they have observed behavioral changes in neighbors when they refer to project beneficiaries, as they are now perceived as more empowered. The partner remarked on the importance of making methodological hybrids to ensure that the activities do not overburden women and youth such that their daily lives are negatively affected. For both the partner and beneficiaries, the primary achievement was the empowerment of women not only in terms of food sovereignty, but also in terms of social rights, especially in San Vicente del Caguán. In this municipality, women established a municipal board of women, a space for them to discuss politics and gender-based violence prevention. The psychosocial support provided through this intervention allowed participants to increase self-confidence to undertake entrepreneurship, take care of themselves, and engage other women in activities that reinforce the need for gender equality. In Ciénaga, participants from FUNDEMICROMAG project state that participation in psychosocial support activities bolstered the confidence of young participants, transforming their attitudes about themselves and their peers. Participants feel empowered to operationalize their business models and have improved their capacity to trust their peers while working collaboratively. This is an achievement that the activity in Ciénaga expected to accomplish. However, feeling empowered is challenged by concerns participants express in the delay in formalizing their businesses. PAR and the partner have made an important effort to increase the sense of empowerment among participants, the next step in projects of this type is for implementers to increase their efforts to develop alliances with public and private organizations that allow participants to continue accessing technical assistance, and individual financial support while projects reach financial balance. Potential collaborators include but are not limited to the National Training Service (SENA), local chambers of commerce, and public economic development offices, through strategies like subsidies for participants 23 engaged in entrepreneurial programs, support to access microloans and other financial services for vulnerable populations. Sustainability In San Vicente del Caguán, the perception of women regarding the end of project implementation was focused on the continued care of family gardens as a practice that facilitates healthy and self-sufficient consumption. They spoke about the importance of continuing to act as agents of change that motivate families from different neighborhoods to start the process of cultivating urban plots. They stated that once the implementation period is over, they will require financial assistance from the office of the municipal mayor in order to expand cultivation areas to produce on a large enough scale for commercialization in rural markets. Other institutions that could provide this kind of assistance include but are not limited to Finagro, SENA, the economic development office of San Vicente del Caguán, Banca de las Oportunidades, and NGOs specialized in offering microloans. PAR can contribute by identifying routes to access resources and developing information sessions for beneficiaries. Staff from CORPOMANIGUA refer to sustainability as improved learning capacity in areas such as: 1. The capacity for financing negotiation with mayor’s offices, government secretaries and governors; 2. The leadership roles assumed by women sustaining the cultivation plots; and 3. The solidarity between neighbors that helps maintain the plots and spread cultivation skills. They noted that women are in the process of learning the practices to influence projects and rural development bodies; however, more time is needed for them to be able to have the impact they want to have on public spaces. In Ciénaga and Cartagena, project sustainability depends upon context variables that could potentially affect the capacity of participants to improve income generation by themselves. Despite the promise of income￾generating activities for low-income beneficiaries, one of the main risks is that in the short run, their living conditions are preventing them from fully engaging in project activities, a common paradox faced by these types of projects. As mentioned earlier, the beneficiaries have to make a decision regarding whether they want or need to continue looking for informal ways of obtaining income or maintain their entrepreneurial processes. In the long run, these conditions will be a challenge for the sustainability of income generation enterprises. On the reconciliation side, the main obstacle is the presence of armed actors in the Cartagena neighborhoods where the intervention is taking place. This reduces the possibility of building trust in public institutions and of promoting environments that strengthen emotional-mental health and individuals’ sense of empowerment. YOUTH AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVES: TOURISM ACTIVITIES Economic Components Three of the PAR interventions evaluated this cycle include specific strategies to improve economic opportunities among youth and communities through tourism endeavors. They include: Youth with Invigorating Cultural Entrepreneurial Endeavors (Youth With Productive Values) implemented by SURTIGAS foundation in Cartagena (February 2018 – September 2019); Strengthening the Value Chain of Tourism and Ecotourism in Ciénaga and Nueva Venecia (municipality of Sitionuevo) implemented by CREATA (March 2017* - -January 2019); and Passion Caquetá: Reconciliation and Economic Inclusion * Project start date in Arauca. Addendum 1 was signed on 08/29/2017 24 Through Community-based Tourism in the Manantial Reserve in Florencia, implemented by the Chamber of Commerce of Florencia (December 2017 – December 2018). The goal of Youth With Productive Values is to contribute to personal development and to create income for 150 at-risk youth from Cartagena through the reconstruction of historical memory, increasing their economic integration in the tourism sector of the city. In Ciénaga (and Nueva Venecia), CREATA seeks to carry out reconciliation actions by strengthening tourism, and especially the ecotourism value chain in Ciénaga and Nueva Vanecia, creating spaces for current and potential public and private actors to engage in the expansion of tourism in this region. In Florencia, the Passion Caquetá project aims to foster ecotourism in the Manantial Natural Reserve in Florencia to enable new narratives and generate economic and social opportunities for 250 farmers affected by the armed conflict and also for ex-combatants. According to project beneficiaries from Youth with Productive Values, participation in this initiative allowed them to gain business knowledge including setting business goals, developing a business plan, marketing, how to set up prices, and support to legally start a business. Participants highlight they now have the skills and tools to start their own cultural enterprise and that they are responsible for making it sustainable. Stage two of the project helped them to identify individual and group abilities and talents that can help them to improve economic livelihoods, based on their own culture and traditions. For the partner, along the implementation process, the development of entrepreneurial skills has not only helped to recover ancestral practices, memory, and traditional knowledge, but also provided an opportunity for economic development through the support of cultural entrepreneurial endeavors. Also in the Caribbean, during the first stage of the project implementation4, CREATA supported the design of an ecotourism venture in the palafito5 villages centered in Nueva Venecia. CREATA made an inventory of tourist attractions (the ecological landscape and the traditions and culture of the people living in palafito villages) and increased awareness among the community members participating in the project about the potential benefits of tourism. This community can offer particular ecological and cultural attractions, while the community’s small size and physical distance from the mainland can also attract tourists. In the core urban area of Ciénaga, the tourism venture focuses on historic and cultural tourism. A focus group discussion with project beneficiaries allowed C-AME to observe important levels of participants’ engagement in the project and commitment to a long-term touristic enterprise. According to CREATA, a significant project achievement here is that the touristic offerings available in Ciénaga are now more coordinated. The partner reports that before their arrival to Ciénaga, tourist service providers did not communicate with each other, it was not due to conflict but because they did not know each other. By increasing awareness among participants and developing a tourist initiative for Ciénaga, participants are now able to understand the touristic venture as a whole and not only as separate initiatives. Beneficiaries from Passion Caquetá reported the project advanced in that it led to the identification of tourist attractions present in the Manantial Reserve. These include three stone Malokas where the indigenous people perform the rituals of purification; the diversity in flora and fauna in the tourist area; and 4 A second round of the project should start around April-May 2019. The new stage will be also receiving funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. 5 Wooden houses raised on stilts 25 fishing and agriculture such as the cultivation of cachama (a type of fresh water fish), arazá (a tropical fruit) sweets, and other organic products. These projects seek to develop ecological, cultural and/or community-based tourism ventures involving vulnerable populations with the expectation of improving their economic opportunities. Three aspects of this undertaking merit examination: the core theme of the endeavor (i.e. ecological, cultural and/or community-based), economic opportunities, and tourism itself. Understanding the interplay of these efforts is critical to assessing project outcomes. Colombia’s tourism industry has been growing in recent years and a contributing factor has been the improvement of security conditions; this growth has yielded important economic and social impacts that vary across locations. Whereas there is an increased demand for novelty touristic products, this trend also raises the challenge of improving economic development while also protecting cultural diversity and ancestral practices, ecological values, and communities delivering products and services. That is, when developing this type of tourism initiative, PAR and the partners need to ensure their cultural adequacy and social and/or environmental responsibility while also focusing on improving the livelihoods of vulnerable communities that are at the center of the tourism ventures6. In the case of Youth with Productive Values implemented in Cartagena, cultural endeavors face the challenge of being “appropriate;” that is, they need to allow the unique cultural environment to govern the products and practices that will be exchanged, and not the other way around. In other words, responsible tourism development requires navigating and respecting cultural practices. Although SURTIGAS has led significant efforts to build capacity among participants, C-AME’s interviews did not reveal evidence of efforts to construct these cultural management practices, or any ways in which the implementer is leveraging cultural values beyond their economic value. For instance, one staff member from SURTIGAS states: “To change youth mentality, that their cultural and artistic activities have an economic value, even under the same project we have been hiring them [young participants in the project]. It has been very interesting and it is challenging, even for this project along with the board they were paid to dance and they were paid and they were explained how the issue was; it is not how you want it, but as the client wants it, then all this relationship, even the way to charge them.” [Interview with staff from SURTIGAS, Cartagena, April 4, 2019] In the case of Nueva Venecia, project participants are members of a community deeply affected by the armed conflict who coexist in a very fragmented social structure and are severely vulnerable due to weak access to public goods and services. In this location, a tourist venture is challenged by its capacity to ensure social responsibility. Previous tourism initiatives have failed in their attempts to improve economic and social opportunities for the people in Nueva Venecia, however, tourism operators have found the potential to exploit touristic opportunities at the expense of the community. According to one participant: “There are boats coming from Santa Marta, from Rodadero, from Puebloviejo and they bring 30 or 40 foreigners. [The visitors] do not even buy a bag of water here, nor drink a soda, nor purchase any food like crab or shrimp cocktail, even if we can provide it. Nothing, the only thing they leave is garbage and we have to pick it up afterwards.” [Interview with CREATA Beneficiary from Nueva Venecia, Nueva Venecia, March 7, 2019]. 6 See Project Level Analyses document of “Youth with Invigorating Cultural Entrepreneurial endeavors and recovering ancestral practice to contribute to reconciliation in Cartagena” (pp. 22-25) and “Strengthen the Value Chain of Tourism and Ecotourism in Ciénaga” (pp. 30-38) 26 In addition, this community faces problems accessing clean water and have no access to sewage systems. When discussing with staff from CREATA how to deal with these conditions moving forward with a tourism initiative, the response was, “The way we are dealing with it, it’s like when you go camping, you go to a place where there is nothing, in this case there is stuff, but everything is contaminated. Then, it is like when you go camping that you have to carry many things. Later when the operation is more structured, agencies will have to bring their own water, ensure that the people visiting consume foods are sealed, beverages bottled in glass […] and so on.” [Interview with implementing partner, CREATA, Bogotá, May 2, 2019] The activity partner has identified a solution to address the low quality of water available in Nueva Venecia for when tourists visit the area, however, alternatives to address the problem for the community are still lacking from the intervention. It is not, of course, within the partner or PAR’s scope of work to provide this infrastructure; however, it is a condition that needs to be taken into consideration, not only for the tourists, but for the community, when developing these types of interventions. The lack of clean water and sanitation is a critical deterrent for tourists. The community’s success (both as a sustainable place to live in the long￾term and as a potential tourism site) will largely depend on the improvement of the sanitary infrastructure. Interventions under such harsh conditions could include a technical component that investigates alternatives to improve social wellbeing while also improving economic output for project beneficiaries. In this process, PAR could identify regulatory frameworks that allow for access to sanitation systems, as well as identify strategies to collaborate with with the governor’s office, and/or NGO’s specialized in sanitation such as WASH (https://washwatch.org/en/). From the beneficiaries’ viewpoint, the Passion Caquetá project generated expectations corresponding to infrastructure works needed by the community and previously expressed to the local administration (i.e. repairing the main road, reconstruction of a bridge, and construction of the communal house). However, these works were not included in the initial project plan therefore they were not carried out. Project participants indicate that this situation discouraged community participation halfway through the project, affecting their capacity to develop what the community calls "good tourism" (an activity that promotes both community development while also improves income generation). According to the implementing partner, although this perception affected community willingness to participate, throughout the implementation process, the beneficiaries changed their perceptions about the need for these works. Given the types of tourists expected to visit the reserve, for them walking would enhance the experience rather than arriving by other means of transportation. Tension is still present, however, since the Manantial community still believes that infrastructure development is critical to carrying out sustainable tourism in the Reserve. Discussions with local authorities about infrastructure development could be facilitated by PAR and/or the partner as a follow-up to the project. The paradox in these tourism ventures is the goal of creating economic profit from cultural, ecological, and/or community values, while maintaining the intrinsic values of these elements. These three projects aimed to create income for vulnerable populations, including victims of the armed conflict, which is critical to improving reconciliation under PAR’s TOC. However, by focusing only on income-generation, there is a risk of diminishing non-economic values of culture, the environment, and/or communities. Improving knowledge about the non-economic values of the endeavors would enhance individual and community empowerment by recognizing these additional values and fostering the beneficiaries’ capacity to be change agents. Reconciliation and Differential Approaches 27 A critical aspect to tourism endeavors under PAR is to improve economic and social opportunities for beneficiaries while also contributing to local reconciliation processes. Partners and beneficiaries from Passion Caquetá recognize that the DecidoSer methodology and the diploma in Tourism and Environmental Management contributed to the reconciliation dynamics in El Manantial Reserve. The main achievement was facilitating meetings among victims, reintegrated ex-combatants (guerrilla), and indigenous communities. Spaces for "unlikely dialogues" (Diálogo entre improbables) opened under the implementation of this project, which facilitated conversations among actors who have been divided by the different social traumas that the armed conflict left in the territory. The beneficiaries, victims of the armed conflict around Manantial Reserve, acknowledged that at the beginning of the project they expressed resistance to sharing spaces with reintegrated guerrilla populations, considered them "abrupt, ordinary" or that they could extort them, but nowadays they are perceived as persons who are "Noble and collaborating". Narrative changes were noted among the beneficiaries who participated in the DecidoSer workshops and the diploma course, explaining that the human part of the reintegrated population was rebuilt. It was possible to build relationships of trust among the victim population, the guerrillas, and indigenous communities. The narratives show corresponding changes to recognize stories of pain associated with forced recruitment of ex-combatants and the displacement of families. Identification of community resources to carry out joint projects and generate new opportunities for coexistence among the community was facilitated through shared everyday spaces, family visits, and community lunches. Methodological challenges arose during the implementation of the DecidoSer strategy with indigenous communities. The partner states that some trust activities involving the population were difficult to implement with indigenous women and men since their customs and traditions do not allow physical contact. In this situation, the facilitators worked together with the partner and repeated the dynamics of the games to enable trusting spaces. Based on the lessons learned in the implementation of the reconciliation approach, PAR can contribute to the design of methodological guides for indigenous communities, where communities highlight their traditional games, cultural practices and ancestral rituals of harmonization that contribute to reconciliation. C-AME identified that the project beneficiaries did not have an understanding of the LGBTI population category and diverse sexual orientations, expressing ignorance of these terms. According to the implementing partner, narratives related to the gender approach are identified from the trainings held with army personnel. Specifically, while the beneficiaries did not share narratives corresponding to social inclusion dynamics with LGBTI population, one of the possible justifications is that the methodology focuses on addressing dynamics between indigenous and local communities. However, it remains important to deepen the focus on gender and social inclusion with beneficiaries by activating reflections, behavioral changes and attitudes towards populations with diverse sexual orientations and gender expressions. In the Caribbean, project participants from the CREATA project implemented in Nueva Venecia acknowledge participation in DecidoSer workshops contributes to improved capacity to trust each other as community members and partners in the tourism venture. Participants assert that before the project started, there was a lot of tension and rivalries among project participants. Through the implementation of the project’s reconciliation approach, participants report improved capacity for dialogue and respect for others’ points of view. According to project participants, the community that was fragmented into two groups was able to get together for a unified tourist venture thanks to CREATA’s efforts. For them, the psychosocial support provided by the project definitely helped them join efforts towards the enterprise. According to the 28 project participants, the workshops taught them to work collectively because they first started to trust each other, and later they acknowledged that positive outcomes of the venture would benefit them all. The community living in Nueva Venecia has been victimized by the armed conflict and they were the subject of a collective reparation process from the government through UARIV. During the discussions with beneficiaries, conflict surfaced multiple times. For one of the UARIV professionals participating in the collective reparation process, discussions allowing beneficiaries to express disagreement is a positive result from previous efforts to provide psychosocial support and memory reconstruction for this community of victims of the armed conflict. This was the result of other interventions prior to PAR presence here. However, the emergence of conflict in discussion may not be seen as a positive outcome of previous processes for the partner. In this context, it is important for the partner and PAR to build their psychosocial support strategy to work with these groups that collectively have been recognized as victims, based upon the strategies that former interventions implemented in this community. This will help both CREATA and PAR to continue and build on the efforts that other institutions already started. According to the partner, the capacity for dialogue is the most significant reconciliation skill improved by project participants in Ciénaga. From participation in the DecidoSer workshops, participants report improved capacity to dialogue with their peers, even though they did not know them before the project implementation. Not only that, but project beneficiaries indicate that due to their participation in the workshops, they were able to meet their partners and identify features that made them trust their ability to carry out the tourism ventures. For both the partner and the beneficiaries, the evidence of trust in each other is the willingness to recommend their partners to tourists for the goods and services provision. Although the partner and beneficiaries report significant behavioral improvements in trust, dialogue, empowerment, and respect, the partner asserts they do not measure changes at the family level or among the families of project participants, unless the relatives are project beneficiaries themselves. A significant positive outcome is the capacity that the group developed to establish relationships with public institutions. The partner states that when they first started the project, no one in the public institutions was aware of the human capital that exists in Ciénaga for the development of tourism. Now, there is a partnership between the group sponsored by CREATA and the Municipal Office of Tourism. In fact, staff from that office participated in the C-AME led focus group. When discussing reconciliation beyond the tourism venture, C-AME analysis of the partner and beneficiary narratives shows that the groups have very different understandings of reconciliation in the context of the Peace Accords. For the partner, reconciliation varies significantly depending on the location. CREATA implemented activities in Arauca, where the conditions for reconciliation are completely different from Ciénaga. This is because the FARC presence in Arauca was very strong and, therefore, the peace accords implementation affects this population directly. However, the situation in Ciénaga is quite different. The partner asserts, “Magdalena is closer to civilization” (as opposed to Arauca). Many more tourists visit Santa Marta. According to the partner, in Magdalena people do not talk much about the peace process. On the other hand, the project beneficiaries in Ciénaga feel empowered when they discuss reconciliation within the context of the peace accords implementation. Beneficiaries mentioned the work led by the National Center of Memorial History on the memory reconstruction process of the “Bananeras Massacre” in the late 1920s. Some of the CREATA beneficiaries are participating in this historical memory reconstruction process as well. For project participants, the goal of the Center’s work through memory reconstruction is to improve community resilience capacities. 29 Similarly, the project participants are quite clear that the project goal is to improve economic conditions for reconciliation, a very positive achievement of the project. According to project participants: “The project objective is reconciliation, to create alliances. Under this overall objective, we have used reconciliation as a critical tool. Tourism, that is because we must bear in mind that the project is based on the whole peace process. […] Because many times we say that we are not at war, because there are no weapons, but we are at war still. But in the middle of all that, [the peace process] combined concepts and thoughts and in a way, and after time has passed it has been able to initiate a process that is uniting us.” [Interview with CREATA Beneficiary from Ciénaga, Ciénaga, March 7, 2019] Participants from the CREATA project in Ciénaga acknowledge that the path towards peaceful coexistence begins by improving economic opportunities in territories like theirs. Furthermore, for the project beneficiaries, the high levels of exclusion that persist in Colombia are a significant concern because it was an important cause of the armed conflict. In Cartagena, stakeholders reported improved capacity for teamwork because of engagement in DecidoSer workshops, which is important in collective enterprises. C-AME found evidence that the use of techniques to improve trust and respect contributed to non-violent problem solving among participants. In addition, project beneficiaries indicate that the first stage of the project (the development of the self) was useful to recognize the value of themselves as individuals. They see this as a necessary preliminary stage to develop their entrepreneurial capacities. Both project beneficiaries and the implementing partners described attitudinal improvements among participants regarding respect towards one another. When discussing the concept of reconciliation, project participants highlighted that in the context of Cartagena, reconciliation means coming to terms with the past. It also means being humble enough to be able to engage in dialogue and put oneself in somebody else’s shoes, to recognize differences and be able to peacefully coexist. Although youth interviewed by C-AME provided these definitions of reconciliation, they still perceive that the context is hostile towards them. They report that older adults create stigmas about youth because of the way they dress or the music they listen to (i.e. Champeta, that in the Cartagena context has been associated with poverty and low class cultures), they are accused of being “lazy” or “criminals”. Therefore, there is still intergenerational lack of trust, as well as a context that limits youth capacity to access social and economic opportunities. When discussing the role of the beneficiaries in the context of Cartagena, they say they face stigma from other city inhabitants due to youth cultural values like the music they listen to, their clothing, and the way they talk. In fact, they assert they are being labeled as “criminals” and “lazy people.” There is a need to establish intergenerational dialogue in order to improve perceptions and capacity to build trust among community members. Reducing stigma towards certain groups is one of the goals of PAR’s 360 communications strategy, thus the testimony of the participants indicates there must be additional work on reducing stigma towards youth in places like Cartagena. Sustainability One of the achievements of the project Passion Caquetá was the participation of the beneficiaries in the local farmers markets, offering different products from El Manantial Reserve. However, three months after project completion, the beneficiaries stated that participation in the local farmers markets decreased. This situation is attributed to the fact that the project ended, which indicates the lack of a strong social link to maintaining organizational leadership in the community and association that was formed with other 30 enterprises that were strengthened. In fact, beneficiaries express uncertainty once the project ends or if there is going to be additional funding available, especially for infrastructure development. For beneficiaries, improvement of the touristic offer depends on the availability of resources to complete this infrastructure works. In addition, the touristic venture of the community El Manatial Reserve will have to ensure compliance with regulations required by the tourism office. In order to do so, the reserve must provide the infrastructure to adapt the ecological trails and have equipment to perform the different activities offered by the El Manantial Reserve. Representatives of the association identify that the sustainability of the venture and the organization leading it depends on individual efforts, but also the availability of financial resources to sponsor legal and technical components that have not been fulfilled yet. In Cartagena, staff from the partner SURTIGAS noted that positive externalities from the project are not calculated by PAR as the project benefits. One of these is the capacity of the cultural endeavors to create community spaces for youth, as well as the capacity to legitimize youth presence in the neighborhoods where they intervened. Therefore, in terms of achievements, SURTIGAS highlights the capacity of the project to create legal economic alternatives for youth who are, as a result of the project recognized by the community. This is the result of the partner’s presence in the region for multiple years now, a positive aspect that will contribute to long-term sustainability of the intervention. SURTIGAS asserts it has years of experience and that its commitment to youth in the region will allow them to guarantee the sustainability of the project. They report that in the trajectory of their work has been toward building alliances with local, regional and national partners to improve youth capacity and democratic values among youth. SURTIGAS is the social responsibility branch of the gas provider in the Caribbean region. Staff from SURTIGAS say they are committed to the communities they work with. In Ciénaga, CREATA has been able to identify strong possibilities for alliances. In this case, it is important to mention the effort led by the National Government through FONTUR. This agency from the national government is currently investing in the improvement of the central plaza of Ciénaga, as a historic place, which can add to the scenery that is being promoted for tourist endeavors. According to the partner, their work and the empowerment they have achieved by working with community members engaged in the tourism industry, has contributed to increase the number of tourists visiting Ciénaga. Considering experience working with communities, the partner acknowledges that community processes are long-term processes and in the end, expects the community could have a vision of this project as a community asset rather than the result of individual and fragmented efforts. Challenges to sustainability are significant in Nueva Venecia. In the context of a place with potential tourist attractions but lacking access to public and private goods and with very weak social structures, tourist endeavors like the one led by CREATA face the challenge of being capable of improving the social conditions of the beneficiaries. There needs to be a consideration of the importance of empowering communities directly involved in the delivery of the tourist product or service. Community-based ecotourism ventures are both environmentally sensitive and, “…aim to ensure that members of local communities have a high degree of control over the activities taking place, and a significant proportion of 31 the benefits accrue to them.”7 According to the “empowerment framework,”8 to succeed, these ventures need to promote the wellbeing of local people and the environment. In Nueva Venecia, CREATA is making an important effort to build capacities among the community members to make the tourist endeavor an alternative to improve the wellbeing of the project participants. However, the problems related to the deficient access to public goods and services, and the limited capacity for resilience become obstacles to make this project sustainable over time. INTER-COMMUNITY CONFLICT AT STATE-FUNDED HOUSING YOUTH AND WOMEN INITIATIVES Addressing community conflict in urban areas Two of the PAR interventions evaluated include specific strategies to address community conflict at state￾funding housing projects. Youth and women are the main beneficiary type. They include Strengthening of Transformation and Youth Communications Skills for Development and Reconciliation in Ciudad Equidad in Santa Marta implemented by Casa en el Árbol Foundation (August 2017 – October 2019), and Weaving Territories of Peace, Memory and Reconciliation: Empowerment of Youth and Women of Florencia as Agents of Change and Reconciliation, in La Gloria neighborhood in Florencia, implemented by Casa del Pensamiento Foundation (August 2017 – September 2018). The project Strengthening of Transformation and Youth Communications Skills for Development and Reconciliation in Ciudad Equidad seeks to strengthen the leadership skills and capacity for social transformation among 100 young people of Ciudad Equidad in Santa Marta. The housing project in Santa Marta has around 4,000 homes for members of vulnerable populations, including those living in conditions of extreme poverty, those coming from living in places at high risk for natural disasters, victims of armed violence, reintegrated former combatants, and populations displaced by natural disasters. The project Empowerment of Youth and Women of Florencia as Agents of Change and Reconciliation aims to empower 180 youth and 40 single mothers, residents of the La Gloria neighborhood, as agents of change in favor of reconciliation, using arts education, entrepreneurial strengthening, and memory construction. The conditions of the housing project are similar in La Gloria, there are around 3,000 homes facing coexistence problems, poverty, and social problems like violence, prostitution, drug trafficking and addiction, and others. In both cases, PAR seeks to improve residents’ capacity for reconciliation, implementing strategies to facilitate more peaceful coexistence among the community members. In Santa Marta, Casa en el Árbol works with youth, whereas in Florencia, Casa del Pensamiento works with youth and women. The project implemented by Casa en el Árbol consists of three strategies, (1) to develop beneficiaries’ social and emotional skills; (2) to strengthen skills for community-based audiovisual communication and leadership; and (3) to design and implement pro-reconciliation communication channels. According to project beneficiaries from Ciudad Equidad, participation allowed them to improve their capacity to communicate effectively within the community and reduce intra-community conflict. Young participants “appreciated” that an entity like Casa en el Árbol would invest in them, despite the negative views that nearby neighborhoods 7 Scheyvens, R. (1999). Ecotourism and the empowerment of local communities. Tourism management, 20(2), 245- 249. 8 Ibid. 32 had about Ciudad Equidad. According to participants, the fact that their work is now being highlighted contributed to improve the neighborhood’s image in the broader region. “When you hear comments about the fact that there are many bad people here [Ciudad Equidad], that there are many marihuaneros9 and things like that, but instead they are people [Casa en el Árbol] who believed in us and realized that there are good people here and that everything is not negative.” “We have worked hard for that and the truth is, people already have a different mentality of what Ciudad Equidad is, they do not treat it as something dangerous, there are still some negative comments, but people feel more safe about getting to know us.” “Many media outlets have portrayed the negative side of the neighborhood, so many people do not trust us, few times good news has come out of here, mostly bad news, about conflicts and things like that, they do not use the media to give good news.” [Narratives from multiple beneficiaries from “Ciudadanitos”, Santa Marta, March 8, 2019] Young participants say that the capacity built through the project is now changing negative narratives about the neighborhood. In this process, young people feel empowered and report they now have the tools to communicate the positive aspects of Ciudad Equidad. A review of media outlets in Santa Marta shows that media reported on “Ciudadanitos” as an important attempt to highlight the positive stories that take place in Ciudad Equidad. However, the project did not develop a clear strategy to increase awareness in Santa Marta about the neighborhood, for instance, using the positive stories produced by the youth participating in the program. In La Gloria, the project includes four strategies: 1. Formation of the first Experimental Art School of La Gloria neighborhood. 2. Strengthening of three artistic and environment entrepreneurial endeavors. 3. Strengthening of a youth group in social research. 4. Execution of the third regional Youth Peacebuilders Camp. The project includes the commercialization of institutional videos. The youth produced a documentary and experienced difficulties during the marketing phase. From the perspective of the partner, it is important to create inter-institutional alliances with local companies that can acquire audiovisual productions made by the youth, and also to improve training among youth to improve the quality of the products delivered. There is no evidence that the project has managed to advance the production of institutional videos. On the other hand, the partner has been working with women from the neighborhood since 2014, giving training on craft techniques. This takes place in weekly events called "Women's Circle". During the meetings, women engage in dialogues focused on gender, family and emotional self-care issues. Before PAR started to collaborate with Casa del Pensamiento, women had consolidated their businesses in the artisanal industry. The partnership with PAR allowed this group of women to increase self-confidence regarding their handicraft skills, to participate in business conferences and roundtables at the local and national levels to commercialize their crafts, and therefore, afforded them opportunities for income generation. In this way, the project contributes to reconciliation because its activities are based on reconstruction of memory as a way of engaging with and understanding the past, as well as generating social and economic opportunities that allow beneficiaries to realize their life plans. As a result of this project, the 9 Pejorative term for marijuana consumers. 33 La Gloria community will design and mount 12 artistic productions. The strengthening of three artistic and environmental entrepreneurial endeavors will increase income of 50 families by 10 percent. The youth research group will also carry out two memory construction actions, and, once the Everyone Under the Same Tent camp is over, 180 youth will self-recognize as agents of change for reconciliation. In comparison, the intervention in Santa Marta is less comprehensive than in Florencia. Despite the efforts to change the narratives in Santa Marta, people from Ciudad Equidad continue to be stigmatized by people in Santa Marta. That can be attributed to continuous events of violence that take place in the neighborhood. In an interview conducted by C-AME, the partner suggests that youth get easily involved in illegal activities such as drug dealing or robberies. These activities are, according to the partner, normalized by the people living in Ciudad Equidad. In fact, Casa en al Árbol says that police carry out “raids” (redadas) within the housing project so often, that their relatives tell them to “run fast” when they sense trouble. Normalization of illegal practices indicates that work needs to take place at the community level, in ways that deter the legitimatization of violence. In this context, the partner also refers to the existence of “social cleansings” in the neighborhood: illegal armed groups that implement practices of social control. The partner states they face significant challenges when working with this community due to persistent levels of violence and crime. They indicate that they had to offer support to participants dealing with the death of a loved one, specifically, the murder of a young person in the community.10 11Under these circumstances, the partner encountered widespread fear and uncertainty about the future, as well as the other harsh realities the young residents are currently facing. • Staff from Casa en el Árbol highlight the significant social problems that persist in that community, such as adolescent pregnancy, drug consumption, micro-trafficking of drugs, fragile family structures, domestic violence, and lack of economic and social opportunities. In particular, weak family structures have limit the project’s implementation. The partner organization writes of participants being obligated to do house chores (even if adults are present in the house) before they can attend the project activities. Their parents are not engaged in the project processes and do not find any value in their children’s participation. This type of reaction from the families of the participants indicates there is a need to engage the family and surrounding networks if PAR expects long-term, sustainable behavioral changes among beneficiaries. As a strategy to address insecurity and coexistence problems, PAR (year 3) seeks to implement a security and coexistence pilot in Ciudad Equidad. C-AME recommends that this pilot includes strategies such as identifying potential alliances to improve the economic and social conditions of the participants and their family circles to help mitigate limitations stemming from poverty; to develop a strategy to increase awareness among people in Santa Marta about the positive situations that take place in Ciudad Equidad, produced by “Ciudadanitos.” The strategy should: Identify local stakeholders that would be engaged in the narrative change; and describe the expected narrative change; outline plans to measure the change in Santa Marta • Develop strategies for collective reflection processes and awareness about the negative effects of normalizing violence. For instance, PAR can implement art pedagogy as memory reconstruction activities that allow participants to develop skills to resist violence without putting them at risk. 10 Seguimiento.co. (August 2, 2018). Asesinan de seis disparos a menor de 17 años en Ciudad Equidad. Retrieved from https://seguimiento.co/la-samaria/asesinan-de-seis-disparos-menor-de-17-anos-en-ciudad-equidad-16453 11 News reports indicate the young assassinated belonged to the project, however the partner indicated he did not. Seguimiento.co. (August 2, 2018). Menor asesinado en Ciudad Equidad pertenecía a fundación de Taliana Vargas. Retrieved from https://seguimiento.co/la-samaria/menor-asesinado-en-ciudad-equidad-pertenecia-fundacion-de-taliana-vargas-16462 34 Reconciliation and Differential Approaches The partner perceives that the methodological guides of DecidoSer, promotes spaces of respect between women and young people, enabling the expression of pain caused by the armed conflict in women. DecidoSer was significant insofar as it allowed the partner to update the tools that they had been using with playful pedagogies that succeeded in complementing their interventions. The partner identifies that the methodological guides of "DecidoSer" are a conglomeration of actions that they were already carrying out. The most frequently mentioned workshop among beneficiaries was “Tejer la vida y la memoria” or "Weaving life and memory" and the activity of labels. They emphasize that through dialogue they have managed to solve family conflicts, and also to forgive, as an action to understand the life history of different actors in conflict. It should be noted that women had received psychosocial support to address their emotional wounds for three years before PAR engagement in their processes. This helped them develop the capacity to speak of the damage occurred in the war, such as kidnappings, displacement, murders— most of them related to losses of loved ones—and narratives focused on not forgetting them. Young people identify that at present, families can already talk about the affectations and they do not overflow emotionally. Empowerment is understood by youth and women as the ability to make decisions and guarantee the effectiveness of rights. The implementing partner perceives advances in young people corresponding to the leadership they currently exercise, participating in decision-making scenarios of the community, such as community councils in the La Gloria neighborhood. At present youth coordinate the youth center, take care of the space and manage the security of audiovisual materials. Additionally, youth have managed to position themselves in the neighborhood by holding public events such as the presentation of theater plays, traveling art exhibitions and collecting memories of previous conflict in the territory. According to staff from Casa en el Árbol, project participants have reported an improved capacity to communicate with their peers and their community. During the C-AME led focus group, participants expressed their enhanced understanding of others, indicated higher levels of respect for others, improved skills for dialogue, and, with their new communication skills, a renewed sense of empowerment. Despite multiple obstacles participants face on a daily basis, they say that now have the capability to develop a life plan to eventually improve living conditions for both themselves and their future (or current) children. In addition, some of the participants report improvements in their interactions with their families. When discussing reconciliation, participants refer to it from a community and individual perspective. For participants, reconciliation at the community level means to communicate with others effectively, to solve conflicts in a non-violent manner, and to work as a community in general. At the individual level, beneficiaries refer to reconciliation as the developed capacity for self-forgiveness, as the necessary step to reducing resentment and forgiving others. For project beneficiaries, self-respect and love for others is critical to building reconciliation. The most engaged project beneficiaries acknowledge that they, themselves are the main assets in building reconciliation. For the partner, “reconciliation” is a term that locals often mention because of the peace process, but they acknowledge that the process involves everybody, beginning with “the self.” For staff from Casa en el Árbol, reconciliation takes place not only among ex-combatants and victims, but also between community members. Communities, like the ones living in Ciudad Equidad, have the task to reconcile among themselves, with their surrounding environment, and with the public institutions. For the partner, these processes of reconciliation are critical for successful coexistence. 35 Despite the recognition of what reconciliation entails, there is no clear path to building it in an environment as impoverished and crime-ridden as Ciudad Equidad. Although PAR in their AMEP acknowledges that the program’s “focus on the social rather than individual dimensions of reconciliation”12, what C-AME has observed in their evaluation processes is that the program focus is on the development of individual and interpersonal skills for reconciliation. The community and social dimensions of reconciliation are not evident in the implementation at the local level. Casa en el Árbol implemented project is an example of how the intervention focuses on improving individual emotional capacities for reconciliation as a strategy to build reconciliation. But, it is not clear on what reconciliation entails at the community level, and under that lack of clarity, beneficiaries are producing positive messages that aim at support reconciliation efforts that improve the image of this neighborhood in Santa Marta but there is not a clear strategy of how to build inner community reconciliation. Sustainability Alliances developed through the implementation of the project in Ciudad Equidad are important to create a path towards reconciliation, but failure to deal with “connector” problems continues to impede reconciliation in this neighborhood. For instance, the lack of access to clean water limits the project’s implementation. People living in Ciudad Equidad have access only once or twice a week. Sometimes beneficiaries do not attend project activities because they coincide with the day water is pumping into their homes; in such cases, they must help their families store water for the coming days. This is an example of the types of choices beneficiaries have to make before they can fully benefit from the project activities, one of which indicates a need for the implementer to pay attention to conditions that surround the project. The main challenge for projects similar to this one, is not always evident from their start – it can come about in the limited access to economic opportunity, in poor infrastructure, in complicated social dynamics. Improving capacities for communication is an important starting point in building reconciliation, but the lack of economic opportunities and access to public goods, like a reliable clean water system, remains an obstacle for reconciliation. PAR’s scope of work is not to improve access to public goods and services, however what they can do is to identify public local, regional and/or national partners that can address these needs, as lack of access has become an obstacle for coexistence in Ciudad Equidad. The trajectory of Casa del Pensamiento in La Gloria neighborhood with cooperation agencies allows PAR to envision continuity of the actions towards reconciliation among youth and women. PAR made an adequate selection in the partner, however, the vision that the foundation has regarding continuing to consolidate the experimental school of arts in the neighborhood does not necessarily depend on PAR intervention. It should be noted that the PAR financing contributes to the reconstruction of the social fabric that the foundation in the La Gloria neighborhood was carrying out, especially in the strengthening of artistic and environmental undertakings. The scope of the project corresponding to the consolidation of the entrepreneurship of women's crafts, obtained positive results since it improved the income of women, at present women perceive the importance of moving to stage the formalization of the company called: "Los Alebrijes del barrio la Gloria ". Both the partner and beneficiaries identify PAR as a relevant financing actor to achieve the consolidation of the company, but not the only one. The partner expresses the importance of training in accounting and 12 ACDI/VOCA. (2017, May 30). Program of Alliances for Reconciliation. Activity Monitoring and Evaluation Plan. P. 5 36 marketing, the latter topic allows solving the difficulties that have arisen in the expansion of marketing networks. MEMORY RECONSTRUCTION YOUTH AND WOMEN INITIATIVES Dealing with the past One PAR intervention evaluated this cycle include specific strategies youth and women to dealing with the past given their experiences under the armed conflict. The project is Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá, implemented by CORPOMANIGUA (December 2017 – May 2019). This project also had economic development components, which were assessed earlier in this report. As mentioned earlier, the project seeks to improve food security, promote economic inclusion and territorial peace building. For the problem area dealing with the past, the project includes a strategy to develop processes of truth, memory and reconciliation among youth in Cartagena del Chairá and women in San Vicente del Caguán. The youth of Cartagena del Chaira recognize that one of the accomplishments was the realization of a documentary that details the forced displacement of the “Peñas Coloradas” community. This is an emblematic case that draw national attention. Due to the effects on the community, they are subject to collective reparation. The youth acknowledged the role that memory plays in this process and conducted interviews with the community leaders from Peñas Coloradas who were displaced by the armed internal conflict. The documentary was presented in educational spaces around the municipality. Based on the analysis of narratives and observations of C-AME, it is evident that the youth find value in knowing the history of suffering that prompted the armed conflict and use the tool of cinematography to contribute to reconstruct the memory of this community. The memory reconstruction actions with women in San Vicente del Caguán emphasized as a significant accomplishment their participation in the first artistic demonstration carried out in the municipality. The name of this piece is “Cuerpo Memorioso” or “Memorizing Bodies”. The medium of art was photos of corporal scars evidencing the different violences that women had endured. The exhibit was a mechanism for them to reconstruct their memories and a way to develop resilience strategies to deal with painful wounds from their experiences in the armed conflict. The women felt that mounting these exhibitions in various spaces contributed to the destigmatization of the area. Although it displays cases of violence against women, it also visibilizes the acts of resistance, resilience and strength required to survive. Under Cultivando Paz project, women managed to participate in a march commemorating the national day of victims (April 9). Although this march is held annually across different municipalities in Caquetá, this is the first time that female beneficiaries of the project have participated. Using this scenario, women participants decided to interview other survivors about the challenges they had faced. For this group of participants, it is important to provide tools so that women can formulate questions that allow them to visualize not only the violence associated with the armed conflict, but also the various different fights and acts of resistance that they enact despite of it. Although PAR, through the Gender and Social Inclusion strategy, aims to increase awareness about gender issues, project participants say that there is still a long way to go towards gender 37 equality in their territory. In order to improve the work on awareness about gender equality and diversity, the Gender and Inclusion strategy could be implemented among the relatives and communities surrounding beneficiaries, as well as local authorities and private entities interacting with individuals and communities on reconciliation issues. CORPOMANIGUA does a lot of work to combat the stigmatization of the area as violent, as well as the prejudice against its inhabitants, which tends to stereotype them as combatants. For the partner, annual fairs and rural markets are a strategy employed in San Vicente del Caguán to dismantle the beliefs about the municipality that insist that is “all war or all livestock”. These spaces of rural agricultural promotion allows for citizens, public servants and the general community to note the rich agricultural productivity of the territory. Reconciliation and Differential Approaches The advancement of women’s empowerment during the project is evident not only in the sustainment of produce gardens, but also in the changes in gender dynamics in relationships. To continue advancing with reconciliation and to successfully be involved in politics and local development, female beneficiaries stated that they need to bolster their project formulation skills as well as their knowledge of agriculture regulations. They noted that the project helped them hone skills in personal and community dimensions, but more time would be needed to acquire the higher levels of confidence required to obtain and exercise influences in political decision-making. For the partners and beneficiaries, the primary achievement was the empowerment of women not only in terms of food sovereignty, but also in terms of social rights, especially in San Vicente del Caguán, where the women established a municipal board of women, a space for them to discuss politics and gender-based violence prevention. In the two municipalities where the project was implemented there has been a recognizable change in narratives corresponding to the distribution of domestic tasks among different family members. The women expressed that they had made progress in terms of moving away from universalizing narratives of women as: “Housewifes or Maids”. One of CORPOMANIGUA’s priorities is to mainstream gender considerations into all of their interventions. This fits in with their organizational goal to reduce inequality between men and women. The establishment of family gardens contributed to the objective of improving standards of living by contributing to self￾sufficiency and also by fomenting changes in the distribution of domestic labor. CORPOMANIGUA has its own methodologies to approach gender themes, such as training women to become agents of dynamism. The partner has noted that solidarity that arises between female agents of dynamism and the women who take part in capacity-building trainings to generate change in family dynamics, and that the impacts transcend changes in domestic labor division and also promote equitable gender relation between partners. Corpomanigua has perceived advancements in women beneficiaries’ efforts to establish norms promoting companionate relationships, including more equitable divisions of labor, divorces in cases of abuse, and practicing self-care. CORPOMANIGUA’s methodologies surrounding gender facilitates the empowerment of women by other women. Moreover, it promotes awareness of strategies to reduce gender-based violence. Beneficiaries interviewed emphasized the need to increase awareness about Law no. 1257, which sanctions violence against women. As a part of an investigation led by the women of San Vicente del Caguán, women were able to inform themselves about the functions of public officials via interviews with functionaries working at the district attorney, the family commissary, the hospital, and the Caquetá public defender's office. 38 Sustainability CORPOMANIGUA beneficiaries associate sustainability with the learning outcomes obtained during project implementation pertaining to: 1.the capacity for financing negotiation with mayor’s offices, government secretaries and governors, 2. the leadership roles assumed by women sustaining the cultivation plots and the solidarity between neighbors that helps maintain the plots and spread cultivation skills. They noted that women are in the process of learning the practices to influence projects and rural development bodies, however more time is needed for them to be able to have the impacts they want to have on public spaces. They mentioned that the short implementation period of Cultivando Paz is not enough for the project to achieve higher levels of empowerment among women and that a longer project could lead to women intervening in political spaces by working on family agriculture with municipal administrations. They remarked that this will probably require greater financial resources from PAR and municipal administrations to make rural development via agricultural enhancement a possibility for zones that are currently focused on financing livestock projects. SUMMARY FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS We map the most general traits of achievements and challenges below, in Table 3, as well as summarize recommendations by project type in Table 4 from which several summary takeaway points emerge. First, C￾AME found that PAR projects in Caquetá and Caribe produce similar results among beneficiary groups. Among the most common and most frequently cited achievements are 1) skill development and strengthening, 2) increased self-confidence, and 3) enhanced capacity for dialogue and respect. In general, the three beneficiary groups identified in this report, as well as the implementing partners may all attribute very similar gains to PAR activities, especially those related to the implementation of DecidoSer strategies. The difference lies on the implementer capacity to adapt DecidoSer to their own methodologies for psychosocial support. What this suggests is that PAR interventions have the capacity to create positive self-image and to increase perceptions of efficacy through tangible improvements to beneficiaries’ experience and skill application. In the majority of the cases evaluated here, this can be attributed to successful identification of partners in the implementation sites. Partners' experience in the territory increased capacity to show effectiveness in the implementation process. Another significant finding, is that gender appears as an issue that beneficiaries and partners pay attention to and start to see that gender equality can enable positive environments for social and economic development. 39 Table 3. Typology of Achievements and Challenges, by Primary Problem Area and Main Beneficiary Type Main Beneficiary Type Primary Problem Area YOUTH WOMEN COMMUNITIES Economic Hardship Achievements Personalized life plans; increased self￾confidence; soft skills development; improved capacity for entrepreneurship development; increased awareness about the past and history Increased awareness about gender issues; improved teamwork; improved perceptions about participants at the local level; enhanced women's empowerment; increased food security at the family level; Improved communication within the community; develop tourism initiatives; formation of transformative alliances; participants engaged in other community activities; improved leadership capacities. Challenges Persistent stigmas against youth; limited understanding of non-economic values of culture; project engagement is difficult (there is no short-term incentives to participate); launching business has faced administrative and organizational obstacles; Lack of trust in public institutions; healing process for victims is still in early stages; productivity is still in the early stages Limited access to public goods and services; intra-community conflict; limited understanding of non-economic values of culture and the environment; difficult project continuity after the end of project implementation; beneficiaries felt overwhelmed by the amount of time required for project participation; implementing DecidoSer among indigenous communities was challenging. Inter-community conflict at state-funded housing Achievements Increased self-confidence; improved teamwork; develop communication skills; improved perceptions about the neighborhood (among young participants) Increased self-confidence; improved teamwork; improved income generation. -- Challenges Maintain project engagement throughout implementation is difficult (lack of short￾term incentives to participate); limited knowledge on production and audio technologies; persistent poverty and violence affecting youth Maintain project engagement throughout implementation is difficult (gender roles prevent women to attend); persistent patterns of inner community conflict; 40 Dealing with the Past Achievements Increased awareness about the conflict and effects over communities; increased capacity to mobilize resources for memory reconstruction; empowered youth for memory reconstruction and truth telling. Women empowerment at the individual, social and political levels; improved resilience of victims; presence of the victims in public spaces to increase awareness about suffering during the conflict and women capacity for resistance and resilience. -- Challenges Table 4. Typology of Recommendations, by Primary Problem Area and Main Beneficiary Type Main Beneficiary Type Primary Problem Area YOUTH WOMEN COMMUNITIES Economic Hardship ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITES • PAR and the partner have done an important effort to increase the sense of empowerment among participants, next step in projects of this type (Youth in Ciénaga), is for implementers to increase their efforts to develop alliances with public and private organizations that allow participants to continue accessing technical assistance, and individual financial support while projects reach financial balance. Potential collaborators include but are not limited to the National Training Service (SENA), local chambers of commerce, and public economic development offices, through strategies like subsidies for participants engaged in entrepreneurial programs, support to access microloans and ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITIES • When the project for “women empowerment” in Cartagena gets to the stage of designing and implementing alternatives for security and coexistence, it will be important to support beneficiaries’ initiatives that promote a resignification of community relationships including public officials seeking to enable open dialogue between community and local authorities as a strategy to build trust. • Considering that partners maybe putting “forgiveness” as the center of the reconciliation process (given the implications it may have over reconciliation processes), C-AME recommends that the transfer of the reconciliation approach to the partner, pay TOURISM • Encourage more beneficiary participation in the accountability process throughout the state’s tourism center and floating platform construction projects. Colombian regulation since the 1991 Constitution has encouraged social control of public investment. PAR could use this regulatory framework to encourage current or new social organizations to actively participate in the accountability process of this publically funded project. Community input should be critical for a project that aims to benefit the members of the community economically. • The lack of clean water and sanitation is a critical deterrent for tourists. The community’s success (both as a sustainable place to live in the long-term and as a potential tourism site) 41 other financial services for vulnerable populations. • To provide additional technical support to youth from Weaving territories of peace project, on their initiative to produce audiovisual content. TOURISM • Use cultural processes as a strategy to promote community engagement towards reconciliation processes. • To promote spaces for inter-generational dialogue around culture (youth: guardians of culture). • To ensure that cultural touristic enterprises are culturally adequate, socially responsible, and financially effective. Technically, projects should consider non-economic values of culture. special attention to the reconciliation skills and definition proposed in Theory of Change. • PAR and the partner have done an important effort to develop soft skills for but in the next “women empowerment” project stages, the implementers have to make a significant effort to develop alliances with public and private organizations that allow participants to continue accessing technical assistance, financing and support while strengthening their enterprises. Potential collaborators include but are not limited to the National Training Service (SENA), local chambers of commerce, and public economic development offices. • In San Vicente del Caguán, the perception of women regarding the end of project implementation was focused on the continued care of family gardens as a practice that facilitates healthy and self-sufficient consumption. They spoke about the importance of continuing to act as agents of change that motivate families from different neighborhoods to start the process of cultivating urban plots. They stated that once the implementation period is over, they will require financial assistance from the office of the municipal mayor in order to expand cultivation areas to produce on a large enough scale for commercialization in rural markets. Other institutions that could provide this kind of assistance include but are not limited to Finagro, SENA, the economic development office of San Vicente del Caguán, Banca de las Oportunidades, and NGOs specialized in offering microloans. PAR can contribute by identifying routes to access resources and developing informative sessions for beneficiaries. will largely depend on the improvement of the sanitary infrastructure. Interventions under such harsh conditions could include a technical component that investigates alternatives to improve social wellbeing while also improving economic output for project beneficiaries. In this process, PAR could identify regulatory frameworks that allow for access to sanitation systems, as well as identify strategies to collaborate with the governor’s office, and/or NGO’s specialized in sanitation such as WASH (https://washwatch.org/en/). • Tension is still present, however, since the Manantial community still believes that infrastructure development is critical to carrying out sustainable tourism in the Reserve. Discussions with local authorities about infrastructure development could be facilitated by PAR and/or the partner as a follow-up to the project. 42 • It is recommended that PAR facilitates meeting spaces with entities responsible for land policy such as: the Land Restitution Unit, the Rural Agricultural Planning Unit and the Rural Development Agency. The goal of this is to identify the institutional offer available in the territory, provide information regarding access to land, advantages of institutional coordination, and existing institutional routes. Inter-community conflict at state-funded housing • As a strategy to address insecurity and coexistence problems, PAR (year 3) seeks to implement a security and coexistence pilot in Ciudad Equidad. Identifying effective partners inside and outside the community will be a challenge for PAR in this pilot. But, in addition to security problems, there must be strategies for economic empowerment that, as in the case of Florencia, have shown success increasing income for some participants. C-AME recommends identifying potential alliances to improve the economic and social conditions of the participants and their family circles to help mitigate limitations stemming from poverty. • Develop a strategy to increase awareness among people in Santa Marta about the positive situations that take place in Ciudad Equidad, produced by “Ciudadanitos.” The strategy should: Identify local stakeholders that would be engaged in the narrative change; describe the expected narrative change; outline plans to measure the change in Santa Marta • Develop strategies for collective reflection processes and awareness about the negative effects of normalizing violence. For instance, PAR can implement art pedagogy as memory reconstruction activities that allow participants to develop skills to resist violence without putting them at risk. • To provide additional technical assistance to diversity handicrafts production among women in La Gloria neighborhood. • -- 43 Dealing with the Past • Youth from “Cultivando Paz” project in Cartagena del Chairá expressed that the times between the workshops of DecidoSer and GSI are too long, which limits its capacity to build reconciliation skills and hinders the sustainability of psychosocial support. For projects such as “Cultivando Paz”, it is recommended that the partner implements the workshops of each strategy, reducing times between workshops, which can contribute both to entrepreneurship and to strengthening skills for reconciliation. (Identify what is a good time depending on the population type). • For this group of participants, it is important to provide tools so that women can formulate questions that allow them to visibilize not only the violence associated with the armed conflict, but also the various different fights and acts of resistance that they enact despite of it. Although PAR, through the Gender and Social Inclusion strategy, aims at increase awareness about gender issues, project participants suggest that there is still a long way towards gender equality in their territory. Working with relatives and communities on gender awareness is something that PAR can continue doing while remains in the territory. • -- Cross-sectional components Psychosocial support (Reconciliation Approach: DecidoSer and Gender and Inclusion Strategy) - To extend the scope of DecidoSer strategies among women victims and their children. Specially those aiming at building skills to deal with the pain and trauma produced by their experiences in the armed conflict. (Cartagena-Minuto de Dios) - To extend the scope (number of activities) of the Gender and Social Inclusion strategy among participants, their relatives and community members. This will continue to the work of increasing awareness about gender equality and diversity among beneficiaries and surrounding community members. This will contribute to increase capacity for some women to be more engaged in projects like “Weaving Territories of Peace” (Cartagena, Ciénaga, San Vicente, Cartagena del Chairá, and Florencia). - To promote conducive environments for improved emotional-mental health (as part of the project goal), PAR and the partner need to strengthen its work to build trust within the community and towards public institutions. Implementing DecidoSer workshops to strengthen trust that include project beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries (i.e. neighbors from the communities where beneficiaries live, public officials) could be a strategy to level-up reconciliation skills such as trust, in communities like the ones this project works at. (Cartagena) - Continue working to build and strengthen trust among community members. For this, PAR should continue using the tools available in the Reconciliation Approach kit designed to strengthen inter-community trust. This is important if there is an expectation for the community members to work together in a tourism initiative. (Nueva Venecia) - Utilize the tools available in the Reconciliation Approach to increase awareness among family members of the participants about the importance of youth engagement (and their own) in reconciliation processes in Ciudad Equidad. (Santa Marta) - To use the tools available in DecidoSer to improve relationships among leaders (that seen themselves as opposed one to another) in Barrio la Gloria. Sustainability - There are concerns among former beneficiaries of “Pasión Caquetá” project because three months after the end of the project, there have not been community meetings around the touristic enterprise. It is recommended that the implementers develop a strategy to identify community level leaders that can further assume critical roles of engaging community members after project implementation. - To create sustainability plans, identifying community members involved, their roles, stakeholders, sources of funding, and expected outcomes in the short, medium and long run. 44 PAR may want to also consider results variation among beneficiary groups and how their strategies impact each group differently. For projects that focus on women, despite increased awareness about gender issues, the ability to change cultural norms regarding gender roles is still very limited. The most significant achievements took place among beneficiaries that have participated in gender-awareness activities for multiple years, before PAR's presence in the territory, and still behavioral changes are not evidenced yet among their family members. Regarding LGBTI people, there seems to be increased awareness about sexual and gender diversity, but people from this group are not yet accepted as a regular member of their communities. These are important reflections for PAR given its understanding of reconciliation. PAR focus “on the social rather than individual dimensions of reconciliation,” therefore, there is a need to develop strategies to use the Reconciliation Approach not only to support individuals but also to transform these alleged social dimensions of reconciliation, in this case from a gender and social inclusion perspective. From PAR, strategies to improve gender awareness include to extend the scope (number of activities) of the Gender and Social Inclusion strategy among participants, their relatives and community members. For youth, there are important advances in skills development and improved capacity for reconciliation but there are multiple pressures coming from the context that limit youth capacity to engage in project activities. A detailed analysis of these context factors will be presented in the Context Analysis section. For now, it is important to understand that poverty, violence and social inequality persists as critical factors affecting the capacity of youth to become “subjects of change”. Although there are important efforts to transform narratives about places, reduce inner community conflict and identify paths towards reconciliation, a big limitation of this interventions remains and is the inability to deal with “connector” problems that at the local level, are significant obstacles towards reconciliation. In fact, there is no clear understanding of what reconciliation means among beneficiaries and implementing partners. There are cases in which the narratives of beneficiaries and the implementing partner are completely different, like in Ciénaga, where project beneficiaries have a clear focus of reconciliation under the framework of the peace agreement whereas the partner disregards the role of the peace accords in reconciliation processes in that municipality. Or in the case of Santa Marta where beneficiaries are commended to produce pro-reconciliation messages without a clear understanding of what it entails. In Cartagena, Minuto de Dios partner pay special attention to “forgiveness” in the reconciliation process, however, C-AME recommends that during the transfer of the reconciliation approach to the partner, PAR pay special attention to what reconciliation process entails under their Theory of Change. On tourism ventures, there is limited awareness about the non-economic values of culture, the environment and the communities. These understandings are transferred to beneficiaries, especially the need to focus on improving economic development. Something that is understandable considering the economic hardship that the majority of beneficiaries face. As there is an increased demand for novelty touristic products, that also raises the challenge of improving economic development while also protecting cultural diversity and ancestral practices, ecological values, and communities delivering products and services. Lessons from these focus areas indicate that there is a need if PAR designs a project to improve social and economic development which strengthens reconciliation skills but does little to increase workforce participation, PAR may desire to look more closely at how it balances strategies to serve specific outcomes among specific beneficiary groups. 45 The projects share challenges, as well. Sustainability is a frequent concern for beneficiaries and partners, especially implementation time to produce the expected changes and resource availability in the short run. In fact, projects that have recently closed, were not able to maintain most of the activity they previously implement. Former project beneficiaries are no longer engaged in community or organizational group and do not feel compelled to continue doing so. For these matters, PAR should address project sustainability by looking at the capacity of beneficiaries acquired through program participation, whether they are individual and collective reconciliation skills, and/or productive capacities, and willingness to further engage in specific ventures started by PAR. Here, the role of local partners is crucial to determine the likelihood of future participant engagement, and their capacity to continue developing alliances towards reconciliation. Again, citizen security (mostly affecting youth) of course ranks highly among factors affecting sustainability; we discuss this in the next section. The questions “what is working and what is not” are far too black and white for the realities of programming in a complex environment. What we observed in this iteration of our developmental evaluation is, firstly, that PAR projects have common and reliable strengths and, secondly, that PAR ought to consider how to sustain and improve those elements by attending not only to program participants’ characteristics but also to the environments to which they return each day. 46 CONTEXT ANALYSIS: TRENDS, RISKS, AND CONSEQUENCES FOR INTERVENTION AND RESULTS (Q2 & Q3) Analysis of the reconciliation activity must take into account risks and challenges that arise from the contexts in which the PAR activity is taking place and how contextual trends can affect the implementation of the activity and/or its results. C-AME’s analysis of PAR’s context-rooted problems and obstacles has identified three categories: (1) problems that affect implementation on an operational level, (2) problems that affect the results with regard to the scope of the project, and (3) cross-cutting contextual problems that affect implementation as well as outcomes. THE CONTEXT FOR ANALYSIS IN CAQUETÁ Florencia, Cartagena del Chairá, San Vicente del Caguán, and other municipalities within the Department of Caquetá are strategic territories for fostering reconciliation given the historical presence of the FARC in the region. Moreover, these municipalities were the home of counter-insurgency and counterdrug operations. The dynamic created by FARC and counter-crime units significantly affected civilian inhabitants and engendered a lack of trust in the efficacy of and capacity for dialogue between communities and other social and political actors. In San Vincente del Cagúan, a former demilitarized zone, there were several failed attempts at dialogue between the Government of Colombia and the FARC between 1999 and 2002. The repeated failures contributed to a general sentiment of skepticism towards the possibility of peace and reconciliation in the region. C-AME identified a series of contextual trends and risks that affect implementation and/or results. In the case of Caquetá, these context factors include: 1. Strong imaginarios13 among Indigenous and youth population groups, which affect implementation; 2. Gender-based inequality and violence, which affect both implementation and program results; 3. And stigmatization towards communities in which PAR operates due to threats to human rights defenders and continued presence of armed groups, which affect results. Figure 3. Contextual Elements in Florencia, Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán. Source: C-AME Team, based on information gathered from interviews, focus groups and secondary sources. 13 In regards to the Reconciliation Activity, we believe imaginarios broadly reflects “culture, social ties, and beliefs” and will use this phrase whenever referring to the Spanish language concept of imaginarios. 47 CONTEXT FACTORS AFFECTING IMPLEMENTATION [Q2] IMAGINARIOS AND POPULATION GROUPS: INDIGENOUS AND YOUTH CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION Considerations regarding Indigenous populations The Pasión Caquetá project allowed the C-AME team to observe the challenges involved in the integration of indigenous communities’ belief systems into the Reconciliation Activity. Because protocols and strategies employed in urban settings are often far removed from indigenous worldviews and norms regarding reconciliation and knowledge-sharing, transposing those protocols and strategies to indigenous communities came with obstacles in implementation. These obstacles are salient to at least three crucial PAR areas of action: 1) the construction of collective narratives for the future, (2) the implementation of the DecidoSer strategy, and (3) the gender and social inclusion efforts. In an interview with the C-AME team, implementing partner Pasión Caquetá recommended promoting inclusive collective narratives by transcending Western and Christian worldviews of reconciliation and integrating indigenous worldviews into narratives focused generally on peace and well-being. For interview subjects from the El Manatial Reserve (the location of Pasión Caquetá activities), such a worldview emphasizes concepts such as “equilibrium,” “harmony with nature,” and “healing.” Future implementers should include these concepts when developing interventions, such as community ecotourism strategies, with indigenous communities in order to avoid implementing reconciliation activities that are disruptive to local ways of living or disempowering for participating indigenous communities. Pasión Caquetá’s consideration of all participants’ worldviews allowed the project to develop collective narratives of what the future could look like. The C-AME interviews revealed that westernized training methods, such as lectures, often created disincentives for indigenous and rural communities’ participation due to the intensive participation expected from communities. Moreover, the use of didactic and recreational methodologies, such as those employed by the DecidoSer strategy, did not align well with the corporal and spatial norms of these communities. For example, in the case of Pasión Caquetá, implementers reported that indigenous participants were reluctant to participate in activities that involved mixing women and men, and that male voices predominated during these activities. C-AME interviewees indicated that carefully designed methodologies had a greater potential to encourage progressive reflection on key themes such as gender equality, the participation of women, and peace-building. The Role of Youth in Caquetá Projects such as Tejiendo Territorios de Paz, implemented in Florencia, as well as Cultivando Paz, implemented in Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán, target youth as one of their primary populations because of their high economic and social vulnerability. In Florencia, factors increasing youth vulnerability include high school dropout rates, drug consumption, alcoholism, prostitution, and gang involvement. In Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán youth are vulnerable to high levels of poverty, a lack of opportunities, underemployment, and participation in drug micro-trafficking. Although there have been improvements in perceptions about youth and their behaviors, those socially constructed expectations influence implementation, and thus that is an issue that should be mitigated. Otherwise, they 48 can lead to project dropout and discouragement amongst youth who could participate in social and communal processes. In predominantly rural municipalities like Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Cagúan, youth are exposed to social and economic pressures to enter the labor market early on often before the legal working age. 14 Youth are often driven to participate in social, economic and familial activities that would otherwise be indicative of social maturity due to cultural mandates. Thus, factors increasing youth vulnerability in these municipalities include social mandates for material provision, economically fragile family structures, and teenage pregnancy. Text analysis from of interview and focus group transcripts in the three cities of Caquetá included in this developmental evaluation revealed that youth are often associated with familial references that often imply responsibility (“family,” “parents,” and “child”). Youth are also associated with terms that refer to productive activities (“work” and “working”), and with the need to encourage their participation in the construction of social and communal life (“participate”, “empowerment,” “culture,” and “memory” Figure 2). Figure 2. Radial Diagram of semantic associations with the concept of “youth”15. Source: T-Lab Plus results of the analysis of interviews and focus groups with PAR implementing partners and beneficiaries, and other stakeholders in Caquetá. 14 Legally, adulthood in Colombia starts at 18 years old. 15 Shorter lines refer to stronger association. 49 According to C-AME’s interview with the implementer of the Cultivando Paz project, the familial and economic responsibilities that are socially assigned to youth, especially in Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá, have generated an excessive burden of obligations for them. These dynamics have given rise to a discrepancy between the statistical category in which youth are conventionally located (in the age range between 14 and 28 years old) and the construction of a social maturity experienced at a young age. The ideal of youth based on the so-called “social moratorium”16 (Margulis and Urresti, 1998) that assumes that leisure time is used for activities such as those proposed in Cultivando Paz’s Component 2 -to develop processes of truth, memory and reconciliation. However, participation in project activities is challenged by the need for youth to participate in the labor market to provide for themselves and their families. This challenge is expressed by staff from Tejiendo Territorios de Paz in Florencia, when discussing issues pertaining project sustainability: […] ...there are some [youth] who [...] left to serve the military. For some of the older ones... during school recess, their parents send them to the farms. [...] There’s a little bit of this idea that if they stay here they’re going to go down the wrong path, if they don’t have to go to school. The parents, since they have to work, do not have a way to control them, so they send them to the farms and some do not come back. They stay at the farm and they keep on working, so the reality of being young is yanked away much earlier [...] During their first puberty or in their pre-teens, they already have commitments and one could say that the range which was estimated to say that youth ends at 28, does not apply here. [Interview with staff from Tejiendo Territorios de Paz, Florencia (Caquetá), March 2019]. This situation creates obstacles for implementation, since it has led to youth project disengagement, reduced incentives to participate in PAR sponsored activities, and limiting their conditions for improving empowerment as envisioned by the project. These social conditions have contributed towards generating a sense of general disinterest in collective issues amongst the youth and towards the de-politicization of youth demands, which are frequently interpreted as secondary or expressive of their reticence to comply with social norms. In addition to the conditions that push youth to get involved in economic activities to provide for themselves and their families, there are other disincentives created by the stigmas associated with youth making use of public spaces for recreational activities. This stigmatization leads to threats and intimidation of youth and those close to them by the armed actors that exercise territorial control in Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán. According to the information from local media (Florencianos, April 22, 2019), the presence of armed actors has created fear amongst the teaching staff, which combined with the lack of educational infrastructure, has drastically diminished opportunities for youth to access education. This atmosphere of insecurity amongst the youth in the rural municipalities of Caquetá create disincentives for youth participation in public spaces as well as limits community's capacity to develop alternative public agendas for youth. CROSS-CUTTING CONTEXTUAL PROBLEMS THAT AFFECT IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS [Q2 AND Q3] 16 The social moratorium describes the stage between the final physical changes of adolescence and full integration into social life, which occurs when a person assumes the responsibilities attributed to adulthood. The social moratorium is the period in which the complete assumption of economic and family responsibilities is delayed and individuals possess social legitimated leisure time due to a grace period postponing the demands of adult life. 50 GENDER-BASED INEQUALITY AND VIOLENCE Women Issues pertaining to implementation Gender-based violence and inequality are contextual problems that affect the implementation and results of PAR, especially in projects where women’s participation is a key component, or in those with LGBTQI participation. In projects such as Pasión Caquetá, which involved the participation of women and men from indigenous and rural communities, additional efforts were required to account for culturally enforced gender divisions and ensure the transmission of vital knowledge for the development of the project. The involvement of rural and indigenous beneficiaries required changes to the implementation, especially to encourage effective participation of women in the implementation process and in the development of activities that involved bodily contact (as it was the case with several DecidoSer workshops). Although there is evidence that the interventions implemented in the three cities in Caquetá produced significant changes in the manner in which beneficiaries approach gender relations, this was not the case in all projects. In Tejiendo Territorios de Paz, gender norms account for the attrition of at least 20% of the project female beneficiaries. These women’s abandonment of the project was due to domestic obligations that conflicted with project participation, which other family members did not take up instead. According to C-AME led interviews, some women abandoned project activities during the implementation period because they could not find anybody to take care of their children. One of the staff members of CORPOMANIGUA, told C-AME the following anecdote describing the situation: […] the women comes ready to participate and she’s told “come pick up your girl because there’s no more classes,” and immediately she cease [to participate in project activities], because the model is as such: the girl has a dad, but the man is not held accountable to her, that is the responsibility of the mom. This complicates things. [Interview with staff from CORPOMANIGUA, San Vicente del Caguán (Caquetá), March 2019]. Women Issues pertaining to results The institutional context of state administration on the local level exacerbates the disadvantaged position of women. Several of the public officials interviewed by C-AME have denied the existence of indicators of gender inequality and have blamed women for their lack of opportunities. In doing so, these officials reinforce prejudices and stereotypes related to the disorganization of women, their tendency towards conflict with other women -often attributed to their natural dispositions- and their purported inability to better themselves. In every case, the prejudices reinforced by the officials shed a light on the low levels of gender disparity awareness of those who administer local institutions. I don’t think there’s inequality […] I repeat, if women were more organized, they would help everybody else, but they do not cooperate together well, men are more inclined towards facilitation and that is why men think they have the power. [...] there is no inequality between men and women, just among women. [Interview with staff member from the Secretary of Social Inclusion, San Vicente del Caguán (Caquetá), March 2019]. […]They [women] cannot advance themselves and they are subject to being dependent on men, that is what happens here in rural Cartagena [del Chairá]. Women are very submissive and they dedicate themselves to the home, to making food, to taking care of their husbands, and so the man must go out and work and make decisions. And that is how inequality takes root, but when women go out and prepare themselves, then they win space for themselves in our society and that determines our national government. […] Today the vice￾president of the republic is a women, we have female ministers, that did not exist before, the cabinet was full 51 of men. Women have won spaces around the world, but only because they have bettered themselves, they’ve wanted to study and to come out ahead, but without that, there is always going to be inequality because men will be the ones that set the trends. [Interview with staff member from the Secretary of Government, Cartagena de Chairá (Caquetá), March 2019]. C-AME’s research revealed that in addition to the prejudiced narratives of state officials, there were high levels of domestic violence reported by women (National Police Databases) in the three PAR target cities in Caquetá with 100% of reports made by women in Cartagena del Chairá, 91% in San Vicente del Cagúan, and 79% in Florencia. Similarly, the majority of sexual violence reports are made by women: 100% of reports are made by women in Cartagena del Chairá, 95% in Florencia, and 94% in San Vicente del Caguán (National Police Database, May 2019). In a similar fashion, even though 83.4% of women in Florencia are of age to work (compared to 77.2% of men), only 53.8% access the labor market (compared to 58.1% of men DANE, 2019). In cities such as Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán, whose gender equity programs are newer and presumably less far-reaching, C-AME does not have data that reveals the magnitude of gender inequality, but has collected several testimonies from actors within this context. The C-AME team has concluded that the results of projects such as Pasión Caquetá and Tejiendo Territorios de Paz, which involve “changes in the narratives of social and economic inclusion”, will be severely limited in the absence of activities aimed at transforming family dynamics. These activities should address sensitive topics such as the division of domestic labor to allow women to participate in community activities, the distribution of earnings gained from project activities, and the possibility of equal participation by women and men. Similarly, for the Cultivando Paz project, whose objective is “the construction of territorial peace,” the results will be restricted by the spread of narratives similar to those of the aforementioned state officials that demonstrate a lack of understanding of the historical bases for gendered violence, access, and general inequity. LGBTQI Persons Issues pertaining to implementation Although the initial project documents never envisioned working with LGBTQI persons in Cartagena del Chairá, Florencia or San Vicente del Caguán, one of the projects, Tejiendo Territorios de Paz, targeted a young gay beneficiary. The participation of this beneficiary created a learning opportunity for beneficiaries and stakeholders. However, one of the implementing partners interviewed by C-AME suggested there is still a need to increase awareness about gender and sexual diversity. Other C-AME interviewees indicated that LGBTQI individuals were allowed only marginal roles in social and community activities, especially in predominately rural places like Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán. Some of the interviewees also described the difficult family environments to which LGBTQI people are exposed when they reveal their sexual or gender identity. “They’re also treated very poorly, […] they're not accepted as human beings. It seems to me that what’s missing is work, lots of time to sensitize and to help communities realize that they are human beings who have feelings and who are who they are for whatever reason. Maybe they were born that way or for some other reason they developed those tastes and that’s respectable, […] they’re also very vulnerable and susceptible [Interview with a social leader, Florencia (Caquetá), March 2019]. It is also important to note that the National Center for Historical Memory released a 2015 report indicating that LGBTQI people were significantly affected in Caquetá, especially lesbian women who were punished and disciplined—at times publicly—by the armed forces. Gay, bisexual and transgender people 52 suffered similar fates. According to the Registro Único de Victimas (RUV), LGBTQI people reported being threatened, deprived of their rights to liberty and sexual integrity, robbed, and murdered. LGBTQI Persons Issues pertaining to results Faced with these situations, some local officials interviewed by C-AME have recognized the institutional weakness concerning the inclusion of diverse sexual and gender identities and other local officials have reinforced prejudices due in part to lack of knowledge of the daily challenges faced by LGBTQI individuals. One official from the Unit for Attention and Integral Remediation (UAIRV) interviewed by the C-AME team said that the majority of the LGBTQI population had vices or delinquent tendencies that justified the violence against them. The official said the following while speaking about a transgender leader who recently spoke at the IV Meeting of Political LGBTQI Leaders of the Americas, who spoke about his gender identity and the threats he has received because of it: […] Discrimination is personal as well. I discriminated against myself when I do not accept myself, and when I believe that all the actions and behaviors of the people surrounding me are attacks. If I walk by and someone whistles at me, I do not get offended, I simply keep on going. However, for instance, a very well-known person here known as la Zunga, or la Perra Roja (the red dog), who talks about being threatened with death. In the end, he calls himself la Perra Roja, but his real name is Hermán Lara and Olguita Lara, I do not know if they are a woman or if they have had sex change. He calls himself by this name and displays aggressive behaviors, so obviously the threats are not due to their condition or their status as LGTBQI leader, but rather because they are a homosexual who gives in to their vices [drugs] […] [Focus group with local staff from UARIV, Florencia (Caquetá), March 2019]. Taking into account this description of discrimination against LGTBQI persons, as well as the rationale for violence against them if they have used psychoactive substances, C-AME recommends enhancing PAR’s strategy to increase awareness about sexual diversity, starting with their project beneficiaries. This is supported by the fact that many of the beneficiaries who participated in interviews and focus groups did not know much about LGBTQI people and expressed desires to not talk further about the subject. A recommendation to increase awareness about gender equality and diversity is to expand the scope of the Gender and Social Inclusion strategy among beneficiaries (increase the number of workshops on these issues), and non-beneficiaries surrounding participants (involve participants' relatives, community members and public officials in the genders and social inclusion workshops). CONTEXT FACTORS AFFECTING RESULTS [Q3] IMPACTS OF THE PROCESS OF STIGMATIZATION AND THE PRESENCE OF ARMED GROUPS Given that the projects implemented in Caquetá aim to change narratives to promote reconciliation, social and economic opportunities, and peace-building, it is important to recognize how stigmatization and the presence of armed forces affects the outcomes of interventions. As described by Semana Rural (July 9, 2018), perceptions of insecurity that persist even as actual levels of danger diminish contribute to stigmas of vulnerable populations. In Caquetá, there has been a decrease in the levels of homicides, thefts, personal injuries (except for in Cartagena del Chairá), sexual crimes, and domestic violence (except for in San Vicente del Caguán) (National Police database, May 2019). Despite improvements in security, the stigma against residents has increased because of the atmosphere of unease due to threats against civil leaders and community activists, six of which had to abandon their positions in San Vicente del Caguán (Florencianos, April 22, 2019; February 21, 2019). 53 According to data from the INDEPAZ in 2019, there have been 27 assassinations of human rights leaders and 12 assassinations of ex-FARC combatants in Caquetá since the signing of the Peace Accord between the GOC and FARC. In Cartagena del Chairá a community leader and Vice-president of the Board of Community Action in the vereda17 El Recreo (October 2018) and a community leader and President of the Board of Community Action in the barrio of La Victoria (January 2019) were murdered. In Florencia, two social leaders, including a student at the University of Amazonía and key stakeholder in three PAR projects in Caquetá, were murdered in 2018. In San Vicente del Caguán there were three assassinations this year: a member of the United Moto-workers of Colombia Labor Union, human rights defender working as a psychologist at the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (ARN), and a civic leader. The dangerous situation facing human rights leaders and defenders may relate to the reconfiguration of Caquetá territories after the demobilization of the FARC. According to the Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation (2018), illegal armed groups consisting of paramilitary delinquents and former FARC members from Fronts 14 and 1 are operating in Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán. In Florencia, one such group called the Joint Command Manuel Marulanda Vélez has made threats against the mayor of Florencia and the Caquetá power industry (due to the costs of electricity). This city has also witnessed the presence of delinquent groups dedicated to drug trafficking, extortion, robbery, and homicide. The presence of various actors in the three cities where PAR operates has spurred unrest that has resulted in threats and assassinations of those the armed forces consider enemies. The stigmatization has affected not only human rights leaders and defenders, but also beneficiaries of PAR projects such as Cultivando Paz by restricting empowerment, which PAR defines as a driver of reconciliation. According to C-AME interviews with Cultivando Paz beneficiaries, inhabitants of San Vicente del Caguán are discriminated against by inhabitants of other municipalities who consider them guerilla members. This complicates the commercialization of products from the municipality, the possibility of linking up with actors from other areas, and the generation of support networks across different settings. The beneficiaries agree that the media have contributed to this stigmatization, particularly against Caqueteño individuals (i.e. those from Caquetá), who feel discriminated against by people from other regions: “So many years of stigmatization have generated its own viewpoint. Sometimes I travel to Bogotá and they ask me where I work, so I tell them Caquetá […]. The most difficult part is when people here in San Vicente begin to believe it [the stigmatization] about themselves. […] [the stigmatization] is fostered continually by the news, because there is never news [about the good things we do], except in Semana Rural [Beneficiaries Cultivando Paz project, San Vicente del Caguán (Caquetá), March 2019]. Although the C-AME team does not have evidence that allows for the establishment of a direct relationship between the climate of insecurity experienced in Cartagena del Chairá, Florencia, and San Vicente del Caguán with the PAR activities, the negative external perceptions that residents of other municipalities have of Caqueteños can affect sensitive areas such as tourism, investment, and other inclusive development strategies. As the C-AME team has noted, nighttime transit towards places in Florencia such as El Manantial is viewed as a security risk. Taxi drivers usually refuse passengers wishing to travel to those areas after eight at night. The stigma surrounding inhabitants of the Gloria neighborhood in Florencia has the potential to affect entrepreneurship initiatives, given that it impedes the collaboration with external actors needed to consolidate the commercialization process. This is relevant to the projects located within that neighborhood, 17 Vereda is a rural subdivision of a municipality in Colombia. 54 such as Tejiendo Territorios de Paz, which plans to commercialize the artisanal initiatives of women participating in the project. THE CONTEXT FOR ANALYSIS IN THE CARIBBEAN REGION The analysis of reconciliation activities in the Caribbean region aims to address the primary challenges emerging from the context of the Reconciliation Activity, which could affect PAR’s implementation and results in the municipalities of Cartagena de Indias (Cartagena), Ciénaga, Santa Marta, and Sitionuevo. The Colombian Caribbean has particular characteristics pertaining to its historical process of cultural affirmation as well as the effects of the conflict and associated forms of violence across the municipalities. The geostrategic position of the municipalities, the availability of resources, and the economic vocations of the territory and population should be taken into account to understand how the context affects PAR. This section addresses the risks and challenges arising from the implementation context, taking into consideration the contextual factors that have crosscutting effects on the operational implementation and the results. Figure 3 below outlines the observable problems derived from the context in which the PAR projects in the Caribbean are operating: Figure 4. Context Elements for Cartagena de Indias, Ciénaga, Santa Marta and Sitionuevo Source: C-AME Team, based on information gathered from interviews, focus groups and secondary sources. CROSS-CUTTING CONTEXTUAL PROBLEMS THAT AFFECT IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS [Q2 AND Q3] INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS: FRAGMENTED GOVERNANCE Issues pertaining to implementation [Q2] One the recurring themes across interviews with partners, beneficiaries, and stakeholders is the territorial fragmentation that affects the local centers of power in certain communities. This situation has led to poor access to public goods and services and political recognition.Ithe case of projects implemented in the Caribbean, especially in Promoción del Ecoturismo (Ecotourism Promotion) implemented by CREATA in Nueva Venecia, the implementing partner spends a lot of resources, time, and effort on implementation because they do not have a permanent presence and must travel constantly for implementation purposes. The partner’s costs are significantly lower for implementation in the core urban area of Ciénaga where they 55 are able to maintain a stable presence. Transportation for one person from Ciénaga to Nueva Venecia costs around 50,000 pesos (roughly $15 USD) per journey, and the estimated travel time by boat is between two and four hours — depending on the tides— and, given the lack of potable water and optimal sanitation conditions, the implementers must bring their own water, packaged food and other items necessary for their work. According to interviews conducted by the C-AME team with staff from CREATA, the implementation of the Ecotourism Promotion project faces different challenges in Nueva Venecia and Ciénaga, given that in the first case, the social life of the administrative district is completely dislocated from the sphere of influence of municipal authorities. Even though Nueva Venecia is under the jurisdiction of Sitionuevo, it is more closely linked to Ciénaga, which indicates a discontinuity between administratively instituted relations and other geographic and social integration processes. This discontinuity has resulted in the municipality of Ciénaga assuming informal authority over Nueva Venecia, a phenomenon that is well-documented in the narratives of the implementers and inhabitants. This fact, in addition to the low levels of schooling in the area, the production-based vocations of the communities (fishing in Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta), and the historical trajectory regarding the conflict-driven violence experienced by inhabitants, creates challenges for implementation. Within the context of Nueva Venecia, it is much more difficult [to implement compared to Ciénaga]. The level of schooling of the beneficiaries is very low, the people depends a lot on fishing and on the [national] government. […] In Ciénaga violence was more diminished and the banana massacre happened long time ago. In contrast, in Nueva Venecia, in the year 2000, there was a paramilitary massacre of 30 something people. […] [Nueva Venecia has] zero governance. It is a town, but it is a town where there is no authority, where the Mayor never goes — he is in Sitionuevo—. It is a town that depends a lot more on Ciénaga than on Nueva Venecia, that is why the municipality of Ciénaga has sort of adopted it. Moreover, no one comes to Sitionuevo, people come to Ciénaga and they go to the palafitos, but they do not go to Sitionuevo. […]. This is the context in Nueva Venecia [Interview with the implementing partner CREATA, Bogotá, May 2019]. The CREATA team had accounted for the difficult access to Nueva Valencia and the fragmentation of towns from their official administrative districts, as well as the feelings of abandonment and the obstacles associated with building institutional trust in an area with nearly no institutions. The efforts to rebuild trust derived from the establishments of tourist enterprises should keep in sight the importance of building community-level relationships with local institutions, so that the trust built can transcend the interpersonal sphere and permeate public social and political arenas, which are indispensable for local capacity building. Given that the state could not guarantee the rights to life and security of the community during the violence of the armed conflict, and cannot guarantee access to economic, social and cultural rights currently, the C-AME team believes that re-building trust in institutions could constitute a sub-focus of its own in the work plan for interventions in this geographic area. INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS: LACK OF PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE Issues pertaining to implementation [Q2] Lack of permanent access to clean water is a limitation in the implementation of the project Fortalecimiento de Capacidades Transformadoras y de Comunicaciones en Ciudad Equidad. Based on a review of local media, secondary data, and discussion with the implementing partner, people from Ciudad Equidad have limited access to clean water; the service is available in the houses only once or twice a week. 56 Sometimes beneficiaries do not attend project activities because they coincide with the day that water is pumping in their houses and they have to stay at home storing water for the week. This is an example of a choice that beneficiaries must make before they can fully benefit from the project activities; an example that indicates the importance of the environmental conditions in which the project is being implemented. These types of context situations are factors that can limit implementation and challenge reconciliation-building. This is not, of course, PAR’s responsibility but a condition that needs to be considered when developing interventions for building reconciliation. Issues pertaining to results [Q3] In addition, there are multiple infrastructure barriers that an ecotourism initiative will encounter. Socio￾economic data from Nueva Venecia indicate high levels of persistent poverty and extremely weak physical infrastructure. One of the most critical problems afflicting the village is the lack of adequate clean water and sanitation systems. According to Sitionuevo Municipal Development Plan (2016-2019), in Nueva Venecia there is 0% sanitation/sewage coverage and only 5.6% of the houses have clean water systems (24 out of 430 houses). The Risk Index of Water Quality for Human Consumption (Índice de Riesgo de la Calidad del Agua para Consumo Humano, IRCA) indicates that in 2018 and the first half of 2019, the risk of consuming water of poor quality in Sitionuevo (including Nueva Venecia) was high.18 Water quality was unsanitary in August 2018 and January 2019. A recent report from the National Institute of Health suggests that Sitionuevo has the worst water quality in Colombia.19 In Nueva Venecia’s case, it is largely due to the human-caused gradual deterioration of natural water filtration systems and direct wastewater disposal into the marsh. Consequently, the population of Nueva Venecia suffers from major health problems related to water consumption. According to the physician from Sitionuevo, children's health from palafito towns are the most vulnerable to poorwater quality.20 In 2017, Sitionuevo had an infant mortality rate of 22.14%, significantly higher than the departmental (12.83%) and national (10.73%) averages (Ministry of Health and Social Protection). Because Nueva Venecia is a fishing community, the poor water quality creates severe economic challenges. Fishing resources have declined with the quality of water over the last half century. In 2000, only 6,255 tons of fish, mollusks, and crabs were captured in the CGSM compared to 27,000 tons in 1967.21 In addition to challenges resulting from poor water sanitation, the community faces high levels of illiteracy (30% in Sitionuevo), poor education infrastructure, and lack of access to transportation for traveling to and from school. Additionally, the health center in Nueva Venecia is available only three times a week, the medical doctor only visits the town once a week, and the village does not have a boat-ambulance to transport patients to large hospitals in case of an emergency22. Regarding access to public goods, the Colombian National Government, through its Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, launched its own tourism initiatives and plans to build a tourist center in Pueblo Viejo (another palafito village) and a floating platform in Nueva Venecia to promote ecotourism in the CGSM. 18 Instituto Nacional de Salud. (2019, June). Sistema de Información de la Vigilancia de la Calidad del Agua para Consumo Humano-SIVICAP (Database). Available at http://aplicacionespruebas.ins.gov.co/sivicap_new/ 19 Suárez, R. (2019, March 22). Sitionuevo, el pueblo con el peor agua de Colombia. Available at https://www.eltiempo.com/vida/salud/cual-es-el-municipio-con-el-peor-agua-de-colombia-340624 20 Idib. 21 Jacqueline de Klerk. (2016, Sept. 22). The slow death of the Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta. The City Paper. 22 Alcaldía del Municipio de Sitionuevo, Magdalena. 2016. Municipal Development Plan. 57 Construction began in February of this year and construction is expected to be done in early 202023. Despite investments that aim to improve the livelihoods in Nueva Venecia and other palafito towns, there are concerns among the community members that other, more pressing needs, like clean water and sanitation, are being neglected. This indicates that there is still a significant lack of trust in government institutions. Because of this, C-AME suggests PAR and the implementing partner encourage more beneficiary participation in the accountability process throughout the state’s tourism center and floating platform construction projects. Colombian regulation since the 1991 Constitution has encouraged social control of public investment. PAR could use this regulatory framework to encourage current or new social organizations to actively participate in the accountability process of this publically funded project. Community input should be critical for a project that aims to benefit the members of the community economically. YOUTH VULNERABILITY Youth in the Caribbean face exclusion, which restricts their opportunities to improve their livelihoods, as well as opportunities for integration into community, social and political life, and to social recognition and advancement. Projects such as Jóvenes con Valores Productivos, Generación de Espacios de Convivencia Pacífica, Reconciliación, and Mejoramiento Económico en Jóvenes, as well as Fortalecimiento de Capacidades Transformadoras y de Comunicaciones en Ciudad Equidad aim to contribute to breaching the divide that separates vulnerable youth from other social groups with more opportunities to access goods, services and well-being. The situations affect the potential of cities such as Ciénaga and Santa Marta to build reconciliation and have a direct impact on the implementation and results of the Reconciliation Activity of USAID/PAR. Issues pertaining to implementation [Q2] The implementation of projects with young participants has struggled with beneficiary attrition, primarily due to financial vulnerability, access to social rights, family obligations, and the social expectations relative to the roles youth are expected to fill. In complex contexts such as Ciénaga and Santa Marta, these factors frequently impede beneficiaries’ abilities to consistently engage in PAR activities, which complicates not only the achievement of project goals, but also generates discontinuities in the process. The “cooling down” that results from periods of inactivity is difficult to overcome and often requires additional effort, money and time to re-engage the beneficiaries. For projects such as that implemented by FUNDEMICROMAG in Ciénaga, and that implemented by Casa en el Árbol in Santa Marta, poverty and expectations that adults place on youth present significant obstacles for implementation and have often prompted beneficiaries’ desertion. As the implementers of these projects have indicated, the social moratorium for youth in Santa Marta and Ciénaga, especially in the impoverished areas of these cities, culminates at the end of secondary school when social norms require youth to start providing for themselves and their families. This is especially evident for vulnerable youth, who must assume responsibility for their families, including their own children, as well as other activities associated with social maturity. This phenomenon has allowed the C-AME team to observe youth whose experiences are heavily influenced by the social class/group to which they belong. 23 Tatis, E. (2019, Feb. 17). Infraestructura para ecoturismo en Ciénaga Grande avanza un 85%. Hoy, Diario del Magdalena. 58 Youth PAR-beneficiaries experiencing poverty and social vulnerability have argued that the responsibilities that have been assigned to them by their families or by social expectations, result in project dropouts and low levels of commitment to PAR activities. In the case of Generación de Espacios de Convivencia Pacífica, Reconciliación y Mejoramiento Económico en Jóvenes (Ciénaga), the implementer said that young males are the group most frequently subjected to these expectations: […] One of the most important factors is that the majority of the youth are parents, in addition to supporting their parental family, this is definitely the case in Ciénaga. The men provide for the home and the women do not [materially provide] as much to household, so if the men spent a lot of time in capacity-building workshops or traveling, that is a day in which they don’t get resources for the home. […] So training them and constraining them to a timetable is difficult for them. So we had to find ways to space out the trainings so that they could have at least two days in between each day of training. Even then, there were still people who did not come.[…] [Interview staff from FUNDEMICROMAG, Ciénaga (Magdalena), March, 2019]. Although it acknowledges that these expectations pose a grave problem for youth participation and thus implementation, the implementer of Generación de Espacios de Convivencia Pacífica (Ciénaga) does not identify the social norms shaping the problem. According to C-AME’s investigation, familial commitments differ not only by social class but also by gender. While young men assume roles of provision and participation in the labor market, women have a more limited access to the workforce due to cultural expectations in which they assume responsibilities linked to motherhood and domestic labor (usually not appreciated or remunerated as actual labor) and other labor which does typically receive economic value. Although there is no accessible data regarding the informal market, which is thought to account for a high percentage of the overall real economy,24 the contribution by gender to general social security shows that women have a higher rate of participation (51.72%) relative to men (48.24%) (FILCO, Ministry of Labor, 2016). Based on this data, women’s participation in income-generating activities is important in addition to their role in the “economy of care,” which is to say the value associated with the domestic labor without which other household members could not produce economic value. Therefore, under this evaluation, C￾AME affirms that the challenges associated with raising awareness about the gendered nature of familial expectations contributes to imaginarios that accentuate value-driven differences between young men and women, which in turn may legitimize symbolic and economic violence imposed on women. In the case of the project implemented in Ciudad Equidad in Santa Marta, the implementation is affected by beneficiary attrition or limitations in attending project activities, because of social obligations to materially provide for families or assume domestic responsibilities. This is due to the difficult economic conditions that persist in these families, as well as high rates of teen pregnancy, and consequently, the early age at which young men become heads of households and have to provide for their families. According to the vital statistics from DANE, 20% of youth between the ages of 15 and 19 are young mothers and fathers, followed by 28.5% of youth aged 20 and 24 (DANE, 2018). Social norms demand labor productivity at a young age and this often impedes youth participation in projects like the one led by Casa en el Árbol in Ciudad Equidad, because some families believe that youth should not invest their time in any activities that do not generate economic resources for the family. 24 According to Ministry of Labor, only 9.58% of the total population is formally employed, and of those, only 15.81% are between the ages of18-28(FILCO, Ministry of Labor, 2016). 59 Implementation of projects that involve young beneficiaries has also been affected by challenging security conditions. During the implementation of Fortalecimiento de Capacidades Transformadoras y de Comunicaciones en Ciudad Equidad project in Santa Marta, one of the project beneficiaries was assassinated25 (August 2018) and another was assaulted. This caused unrest among the participants and contributed to need to adapt the strategies and activities in order to address the collective grieving process of the beneficiaries. According to local media this crime was associated with micro-trafficking of drugs, and is another example of persistent violence related to the expansion crime organizations such as Los Pachenca in Santa Marta; this has increased insecurity in the city and has fueled the stigmatization of the inhabitants of Ciudad Equidad. According to the National Police Database (May 2019), there have been 354 reports of threats: 40 homicides, 995 thefts, and 515 bodily injuries. According to local media information compiled by C-AME, Santa Marta's inhabitants view Ciudad Equidad as a place they would rather not go (Santa Marta al Día, March 26, 2019), and the government views it as a place that requires a stronger security presence via officers, cameras, and other security tools (Santa Marta al Día, March 4, 2019). Issues pertaining to results [Q3] Some of the problems the youth face can also affect the outcome of PAR’s work on issues such as security in implementation areas (e.g. the presence of actors linked to micro-trafficking of drugs and youth recruitment), lack of productive opportunities for youth, intergenerational conflicts, and the limited role of the government in socially vulnerable areas. In projects such as Jóvenes con Valores Productivos in Cartagena the exclusion that youth experience is often interpreted as the result of intergenerational conflict between youth and adults. According to beneficiaries, adults have permanently stigmatized youth and negatively catalogued their activities. Therefore, for young beneficiaries, reconciliation must account for intergenerational divides in order to (re)build solidarity links and foster inclusive recognition: […] I also think that reconciliation should occur between citizens, because look at the problems that exist between youth and adults. The adults say that, because we dress strangely, speak strangely or because of electronic devices (cell-phones), we are delinquents. Because of how we dress or speak, they say we are delinquents, or if we are constantly with a cell phone or computer, they say we are slackers. I think we should reconcile about these sorts of things. [Interview with beneficiary of SUTIGAS, Cartagena (Bolívar), March 2019] […] I consider us to be a city rich in culture, we have an enrichment of this in the city, sometimes we stigmatize youth just for the way we dress, our way of speaking is totally different, we have different lingo from everyone else. I think that the youth of Cartagena, we need to build ourselves up more and take ownership of our culture. [Interview with beneficiary of SUTIGAS, Cartagena (Bolívar), March 2019]. The intergenerational divide between socially defined youth and adults has underpinned hierarchical forms of relating, which have included labeling youths as threatening subjects that represent a risk for the maintenance of social order and whose free time is a subject of security and control. Consequently, youth vulnerability has been attributed to the youth themselves, rather than to the complex social phenomena 25 News reports indicate the young assassinated belonged to the project, however the partner indicated he did not. Seguimiento.co. (August 2, 2018). Menor asesinado en Ciudad Equidad pertenecía a fundación de Taliana Vargas. Retrieved from https://seguimiento.co/la-samaria/menor-asesinado-en-ciudad-equidad-pertenecia-fundacion￾de-taliana-vargas-16462 60 that span several generations and explain some of the risks to which youth in the Caribbean are exposed. In that way, urban security concerns associated with micro-trafficking in drugs, gang activity, and the consumption of psychoactive substances are understood, within the cultural context of cities such as Cartagena and Santa Marta, as decisions made by youth who have taken the wrong turn, and not as an effect of accumulated social disadvantages experienced by youth in poor peripheral areas of the city. According to the contextual information collected by the C-AME team, youth fragility and lack of access to resources for sustenance are the conditions which allowed for paramilitarism to become a viable alternative livelihood for youth in Santa Marta and Ciénaga [Stakeholder interview, Santa Marta (Magdalena), March 2019]. This establishes a historical precedent in Magdalena, a phenomenon that is important given that vulnerability of youth led to increased recruitment from illegal groups and it contributes to the restructuring of crime groups in the region. These disadvantages manifest themselves in a lack of opportunities, high levels of drug consumption in PAR’s operating sectors, persistent violence, and other contextual factors that impede PAR’s successful outcomes. According to information from Defensoría del Pueblo (2018a y 2018b) [Early Warning number 045-18], starting in May 2018, armed illegal actors, such as Los Pachencas, Los Rojas, el Clan del Golfo and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), have been seen in Santa Marta and the surrounding areas. These organizations are dedicated to narcotrafficking, youth recruitment, and extortion, among other illegal activities. As Defensoría del Pueblo (2019) recently reported, Cartagena has been included in the list of areas with significant levels of youth recruitment by criminal organizations. In Ciénaga and Santa Marta, there have been reported cases of recruitment of young Colombians and Venezuelans, which indicates a greater vulnerability of youth’s rights, and increased levels of unrest. Not only are youth at risk of recruitment, but those who are recruited and later defect are especially vulnerable, given that they are frequently criminalized and re-victimized by the government, which created additional incentive to stay loyal to the armed groups: […] The youth who cut their ties to illegal groups have more problems because the state responds by refusing to treat them as victims and tries them as criminals. Or there have been cases in which the state’s protection does not meet the minimum standards that actually protect their lives and personal integrity.” (Defensoría del Pueblo, 2019). Drug and alcohol consumption is another factor that has affected results, especially given that drug use is a vehicle through which illicit organizations involve youths in micro-trafficking and other criminal activities. According to stakeholder interviews pertaining Ciudad Equidad, youth in that neighborhood struggle with alcohol and drug addiction, which makes them vulnerable and and exposes them to violence ancillary to illicit spheres. [Stakeholder interview, Ciudad Equidad, Santa Marta (Magdalena), March, 2019]. This generate cycles of violence that obstruct trust building, dialogue and respect, all central pillars of PAR’s work. According to the diagnostic of the Departmental Drug Plan 2016 - 2019, Ciénaga, Sitionuevo and Santa Marta are three of the cities with the greatest increases in drug trafficking. Santa Marta is one of the cities with the greatest presence of armed actors linked to illicit drug trafficking activities. Ciénaga is the city with the second highest school dropout rate due to psychoactive drug abuse. It is also the city with the lowest level of coverage of psychoactive drug use by the Centros de Atención Integral (CAD), a social welfare program aimed at providing education and nourishment to treat drug addictions. Santa Marta and Sitionuevo (Nueva Venecia) are the two cities in which families have the most difficulty assuming responsibility and co-responsibility over caretaking for children, which is crucial for bolstering safe spaces that diminish likelihood of youth drug use. (Governorship of Magdalena, 2016). 61 The social fragility the youth experience has also lent itself to the emergence of youth groups that are niches for solidarity-building and protection for vulnerable members. These groups are often associated with criminal practices. Youth are prompted to join gangs and reproduce the violence and social fragmentation they experience due to circumstances such as domestic violence and insufficient levels of attention in single￾parent households or in households where both parents must work all day to sustain the family. According to the interview carried out by a member of the Caja de Compensación Familiar of Magdalena (CAJAMAG): […] the gangs… those did not exist here before. This year there are confrontation with gangs in other cities, instead of fun and recess, it has become about fighting over territories. The second aspect of the violence engendered by migrant groups from other parts of the territory is crime. The organized bands of criminals are incubating in the city and then the youth become a part of this violence. The lack of opportunities exacerbates this. Santa Marta is a city produced by invasions...mountains and mountains of invasion. There are peripheral parts that the state is not reaching. The lack of opportunities for youth to access services such as education [makes it harder for them to develop their own identity]. [Interview with staff from CAJAMAG, Santa Marta (Magdalena)] GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE AND INEQUALITY Issues pertaining to implementation [Q2] The symbolic and economic violence facing women in the Caribbean has materialized in various manifestations of gender-based inequality. Narratives from PAR beneficiaries and implementing partners often mention cultural beliefs that associate women with domestic labor, a role which is typically undervalued. There was a changing attitude towards transcending traditional domestic roles in the narratives of female beneficiaries of the projects evaluated in the Caribbean. They acknowledged that social context complicates their ability to secure roles that are more autonomous by accessing more equitable labor markets or entrepreneurial endeavors. In the case of the Liderazgo social y económico femenino project in Cartagena, female beneficiaries struggled with psychosocial afflictions due to forced displacement. In the face of the assassination of spouses and disrupted family structures, women assumed new roles, often in informal work sectors in order to sustain their families. In these sectors, they were often victims of other forms of violence, vagrancy, and re￾victimization. Apart from experiencing emotional harm, the women were unable to keep up with their traditional domestic tasks and lost children to gang recruitment. The narratives of project participants make frequent references to varying degrees of emotional distress experienced during the displacement. They also demonstrate mistrust toward the state and municipal administration, assigning them responsibility for allowing violence to persist. This combination of unrest and distrust can affect project implementation in activities focused on improving security and coexistence. These goals are threatened by a lack of trust in the government as a partner in plans to improve security conditions. “I don’t feel supported by the state because they were not aware that people lost their home, their farm, they lost everything, they lost family members. For example, I lost my dad and my sixteen-year-old brother. I was nine months old and my mom told me. She had to explain it to me because I would spend lots of time asking "My dad? My dad?" and when I was ten years old, I learned that my dad was killed by those people, along with my brother. Then I can only imagine how much my mom and my brother lived through if they lived through 62 that in the flesh. My sister was five years old [...] she remembers they would throw themselves to the floor, they would grab pregnant women and rape them, kill them and take their babies to kill them, that is horrifying. [Beneficiary Minuto de Dios project, Santa Marta (Magdalena), May 2019] Although the partner is making an effort to strengthen mental health for women and to generate opportunities for socio-economic inclusion, there is significant concern about displaced women in Cartagena and their limited access to the labor market. According to labor market data from DANE (2019), gender￾based inequality in access to labor markets is increasing, with a current unemployment rate of 8.7% for women and 5.5% for men. This situation DANE affects the project’s implementation efforts to link women to the labor market. The partner reported that these conditions often prompt feelings of hopelessness among women participating in the project: “There is a difference between a displaced women who arrives and is forced to build her business, sustain her family, and help her kids come out ahead, and the daughters of these displaced women who have distinct opportunities, they can study, the constant struggles facing their mothers and grandmothers are different from the challenges the daughters are facing. They are worried about their lack of experience, the backgrounds different national employment boards are demanding, they demand a lot of experience. Sometimes companies’ selection of personnel is based more on word-of-mouth than on the candidates’ formal application. We are working to build alliances with firms so that they will adapt their job profiles to the backgrounds of the girls we are working with. This in an effort to minimize the existing hopelessness, to show them to be persistent. [Interview with staff from Minuto de Dios, Santa Marta (Magdalena), May 2019] In projects such as: Jóvenes con Valores Productivos, Ecotourism promotion in Nueva Venecia, Fortalecimiento de Capacidades Transformadoras y de Comunicaciones en Ciudad Equidad, and Generación de espacios de convivencia pacífica, interview narratives frequently highlighted troubling views toward women. The narratives often portrayed biology-focused representations of women, characterizing them based on physical qualities. For example, there were mentions of prejudices associated with women’s inability to execute certain types of labor. Based on analysis of the interviews, the C-AME team has concluded that, “[...] patriarchal relations maintain generic social order based on modes of discrimination [within a male dominated paradigm].”26 We [men] are always looking to command, the men, the women always at home taking care of things. When the woman says she is going to go out and drink, the man says “What do you mean you are going to go out and drink?” Generally, this is an extended dilemma, who do we see most in football fields [...] we see dads, boys or girls that are in their adolescence if they are playing, but the moms are always at home. [Interview with beneficiary from Casa en el Árbol Project, Santa Marta, March 2019] In Nueva Venecia, women’s plans for tourism have granted them new levels of autonomy and empowerment, the men respect them a lot more, in meetings men and women sit down as equals. The [tourism opportunity] in Nueva Venecia is nautical tours, the men are the ones who know how to navigate and drive. It would be a lot for the women to learn to be captains and execute that labor. [Interview with beneficiary from CREATA project, Nueva Venecia, March 2019] This patriarchal representation in the Caribbean permeates implementing partners’ and beneficiaries’ narratives in the projects mentioned above, especially in narratives focused on biological categories when discussing gender. The C-AME team examined transformative narratives to identity strategies that contribute to changing unequal and exclusionary narratives. On the other hand, the narratives above expose the persistence of patriarchal ideas that underestimate or undervalue the roles that women can 26 LAGARDE, Marcela (1996). Identidad de género y derechos humanos. La construcción de las humanas. 63 assume, and it is worth noting that while implementers make an effort to value women, their discourse can end up contradicting them: Sometimes we stigmatize women, once I was in an event where they said "Women are there to wash plates, care for kids and take care of the house,” I think they have the same conditions and abilities as us men, even though they cannot do heavy labor like lifting cement or other heavy things, they are much better than us in the sense that they can do several things at the same time, cook, wash. [Interview with staff from FUNDEMICROMAG, Ciénaga (Magdalena), March 2019]. It is necessary to speak up so that the men here accept that women can do the same that they can. For example, here everything is done by men, men drive and work with motorcycles, […] it is rare to see a woman do it. [Interview with staff from CREATA, Bogotá, May 2019]. In the Caribbean region, PAR can extend the gender and social inclusion strategy and train partners to reflect on the systemic differences between the respective conditions, situations, and needs of men and women and thereby dismantle biological imaginarios in order to work towards a more equitable system. Issues pertaining to results [Q3] LGBTQI people face discrimination in neighborhoods of Locality 3 and other vulnerable sectors of Cartagena where SURTIGAS and Minuto de Dios implement their projects. Youth and women have spoken of incidents of physical and psychological violence against neighbors with diverse sexual orientations. The social exclusion and stigmatization experienced by young homosexuals in this locality reinforces patterns of inequality and sanctions the patriarchal paradigm that is predominant in Cartagena. Although someproject stakeholders have developed gender and inclusion workshops to decrease intolerance, it remains difficult to counter violent acts of discrimination and violation of LGBTQI human rights. “There is a lot of it [violence] in my community, there is a gay guy who lives next to my house, he is a hair stylist, but every weekend they throw rocks at his house, they break the windowpanes, they say terrible things to him because of his sexual condition. I’m a part of the action committee in the community and we try to have workshops on inclusion and all these things, but there is intolerant people and that makes it difficult for us.” [Interview with beneficiaries from SURTIGAS project, Cartagena (Bolívar), April 2019]. “In my neighborhood, [there was a guy who is now deceased] who they hit because he was gay, they would do it at night, there was a trash can they would leave him lying by it, and he would fight it [...] there is a house there that shelters trans and there is a trans person who lives with Victoria Daza who recently graduated with a law degree from Bolívar. [She’s one of the people] who are fighting for trans rights, which are frequently violated here in Cartagena and there in Nelson Mandela [a neighborhood in the area].” [Interview with beneficiaries from Minuto de Dios project, Cartagena (Bolívar), April 2019]. The concept of “women’s empowerment” emerges from the need for women to acquire power and self￾esteem, as a prerequisite for equitable development across genders. The conference on Population and Development in Cairo (1994) uses the term “empowerment” as a need that women have in order to be able to access power and greater opportunities to affect decisions that affect their daily lives. During the evaluation the C-AME team identified that in the project implemented by Minuto de Dios in Cartagena, inequality in the Nelson Mandela neighborhood affects the outcomes of the project relative to the scope of advancing women’s empowerment to tackle unequal opportunities and access to political spaces and decision-making. Their opportunities for participation are minimal, due to underestimation and ignorance of the organizational capacity and resilience that they have developed to cope with forced displacement. The interview narratives demonstrate the female beneficiaries face challenges for being recognized as leaders: 64 I can say that in Nelson Mandela, that was a neighborhood populated by displaced, that the recognition has gone more to the male leaders than to the female leaders who fell, because if you go there, you see a place where the men are, but the women leaders, they are mentioned, but they are not there with the rest of the leaders [...] I’ve heard of a nurse who was a leader but I have not seen her represented with the rest of the leaders, so we see that women [are not taken into account]. It is always the men. [Interview with beneficiaries from Minuto de Dios project, Cartagena (Bolívar), April 2019]. Although the project has fostered empowerment through psychosocial support and workshops on decision￾making and has encouraged women to feel confident enough to get involved in social projects, this is a small accomplishment relative to the daunting challenge of securing social recognition and appreciation for women as leaders and decision-makers. This is a necessary condition for them to be able to effectively intervene and promote remedial actions to solve problems affecting their daily lives. CONSTRUCTIVE REFLECTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS This report has synthesized the meaningful observations, data gathering, and mixed-method analyses that we have completed to date and leverages this body of work to address three primary questions about the Reconciliation Activity: Q.1. What is considered working and not working, and by whom, as the intervention unfolds? Q.2. How is the Reconciliation Activity connected to and affected by the wider context? Q.3 How and why do contextual factors influence results and what are the trends in the wider context? Here, we present actionable recommendations based on our analysis. C-AME has identified multiple data points within these 8 projects and identified non-trivial patterns in their results across interventions and target beneficiary groups. Moreover, we have carefully deconstructed the local context in which these projects were implemented and connected key influencers within local level dynamics to situate our understanding. We cannot say that PAR, as a whole, is missing “X” because it is missing from a single project. Nor can we say that PAR, as a program, succeeds in doing “Z” because a single project is successful. However, our approach permits us to identify and reflect upon project-level features that PAR may wish to build into, or out of, its future interventions as a means of adapting to empirical data from the field. Here, C￾AME presents a series of recommendations organized around three themes: programmatic, strategic, and Theory of Change recommendations. PROGRAMMATIC RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Develop strategies to address connector problems PAR has identified the existence of “common unresolved problems” that have limited Colombians’ commitment to take action to strengthen reconciliation. Findings from C-AME’s second and third developmental evaluations suggest that socioeconomic factors, crime and violence, and lack of trust in institutions limit implementation capacity. If limited access to a livable income and formal education opportunities restricts participants’ ability to engage with and attend project activities consistently, the alliances will be limited in their capacity to promote reconciliation in those places that PAR is intervening. For instance, limited access to economic and social opportunities is restricting youth’s ability to participate 65 fully and consistently in project activities in urban areas (e.g. early access to the informal job market limits youth capacity to attend project activities); whereas communities located in areas further from urban centers struggle to improve economic development due to limited state presence and situations of violence. While poverty and social exclusion are not directly harmful to reconciliation, they become “common unsolved problems,” or connector problems, that challenge PAR's program implementation and create obstacles to reconciliation building. PAR and the partner have done an important effort to develop strategic alliances to improve economic and social opportunities for project beneficiaries. However, PAR's should continue developing alliances with public and private organizations that enable institutional capacities to address these “connector problems”. Initiatives trying to address economic hardship could develop alliances that allow participants to continue accessing technical assistance, to obtain individual financial support while enterprise projects reach financial balance or workforce training is completed. Potential collaborators include in this area include but are not limited to the National Training Service (SENA), local chambers of commerce, and public economic development offices, through strategies like subsidies for participants engaged in entrepreneurial programs, support to access microloans and other financial services for vulnerable populations. For communities facing lack of public infrastructure, PAR could identify alternatives in national policies to address problems of access to public goods and services, identify paths to send specific requests to national, regional and local governments (citizen empowerment). Projects implemented in state-funded housing locations could collaborate with local allies to identify security concerns, develop strategies to address inner community coexistence, and identify local allies and community members to change negative stereotypes about certain populations, and address problems related to the normalization of violence. Partners for these initiatives could include mayor's offices of security and coexistence, and specialized NGOs. Projects that deal with the past find important national allies with local presence like the National Center for Historic Memory (a current PAR partner), local NGOs, and organizations of victims. 2. Continue working with beneficiaries, implementing partners, and stakeholders to increase awareness about gender disparities Both beneficiaries and partners continue to use patriarchal language in their discussion of women and gender issues, an issue PAR should continue working to address. This illustrates the persistence of traditional (unequal) gender norms that become obstacles to gender equality and the acceptance of diverse genders and sexual orientations. In order to transform social norms regarding gender, C-AME recommends that PAR extend the scope (number of activities) of the Gender and Social Inclusion strategy not only among participants, but also among their relatives and community members. This will maintain and improve PARs efforts to increase awareness about gender equality and diversity among beneficiaries and surrounding community members, as well as promote women’s empowerment and improve their ability to engage in project implementation (i.e. more time available outside the home). We noted often in our project-level analysis that we cannot extrapolate from a respondent’s assertion that he or she now understands the importance of gender equality because we do not have the capacity to measure behavioral changes. For instance, patriarchal representation of gender issues in the Caribbean permeates implementing partners’ and beneficiaries’ narratives, which tend to focus on biological categories when discussing gender and thereby perpetuate unequal conditions for women. The C-AME team identified transformative approaches that contribute to altering unequal and exclusionary narratives. Again, PAR is already aware of this connecter problem, but strategies to change the social dimensions of reconciliation must intervene the beneficiary sphere as well as the partner’s. 66 STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY 1. Identify strategies to implement the Reconciliation Approach beyond the direct participants in implementation. PAR has excelled at including the Reconciliation Approach (DecidoSer and Gender and Social Inclusion Strategy, GIS) in their interventions. In fact, beneficiaries and partners consider the psychosocial support aspect of the Reconciliation Approach to be the distinctive element of working with PAR. Multiple partners interviewed for this evaluation note that they have incorporated tools from DecidoSer and GIS into their own work with other projects. They also report that they have been able to merge their own psychosocial support strategies with DecidoSer. However, as C-AME has noted in the previous Developmental Evaluation, beneficiaries and partners suggest that PAR should involve relatives, close network members, and communities in the psychosocial support activities. Engaging actors other than project participants is critical for the improvement of social opportunities and is relevant for building reconciliation. C-AME’s evaluation of the Reconciliation Activity indicates that it has achieved considerable improvements in the development of reconciliation skills among program participants through the implementation of the Reconciliation Approach. In some cases, “reconciliation” as a process “that is expressed in the form of trust, dialogue, respect, and empowerment” has shown improvements at the interpersonal level (improving relationships between family members or peers), but rarely in the community, social, and political dimensions of “reconciliation” as a goal. This could be due to the lack of continuity in the implementation of the Reconciliation Approach after the end of the interventions. This suggests that the program’s capacity to improve commitment towards reconciliation is still limited to their project-level achievements. As a strategy to scale-up the reconciliation process, PAR can engage family and participants’ network members in the Reconciliation Approach workshops. Other actors engaged in project implementation, such as local authorities, and private entities that collaborate with projects participants should also be part of the Reconciliation Approach activities. This will help to increase awareness among economic, social, and political actors about reconciliation, as well as contribute to strengthening the community and social dimensions of reconciliation. This will advance the sustainability of PAR’s progress beyond the life of each project, which is a concern expressed regularly in interviews with C-AME. 2. Increase awareness of the non-economic values of culture, communities, and the environment in tourism ventures In the context of tourism, there is limited awareness about the non-economic values of culture, the environment, and the communities. The overt focus on extracting value from these concepts is transferred to beneficiaries, especially the need to focus on improving economic development, which is understandable considering the economic hardship facing the majority of beneficiaries. As there is an increased demand for novelty tourist products, so increases the challenge of protecting cultural diversity and ancestral practices, ecological values, and the communities delivering products and services. C-AME recommends that PAR include intervention strategies that detail specific non-economic values of culture, communities, and the environment to identify the social sustainability of the venture, especially among vulnerable populations. 3. Determine strategies to empower communities to trust and hold their government accountable. Regarding governance issues, the evaluation indicated that, in contexts where PAR is implementing interventions, there is a significant lack of trust in government institutions in providing public goods and committing to peacebuilding and reconciliation. The problem is especially prevalent in the Caribbean, where female victims feel the government is responsible for the continuation of violence, and in communities like Nueva Venecia, where respondents perceive that their most pressing needs are neglected. Thus, it is 67 important for PAR’s interventions to encourage and empower communities to hold the government accountable for responding to their needs. Colombian regulation since the 1991 Constitution has encouraged social control of public investment. PAR could use this regulatory framework to encourage current or new social organizations to participate in the accountability process of publicly funded projects implemented locally, or to engage in civic actions locally. An example of this took place in Caquetá, where participants from the three projects C-AME evaluated attended meetings to discuss the formulation of the Departmental Development plan. Project participants were able to engage in conversations about gender, youth and tourism, and take part in the discussions that shape development strategies for governmental action in Caquetá. This could also be an opportunity to empower these communities to obtain state resources to support their activities, post PAR’s engagement. For PAR, this is an opportunity to identify other international development agencies working on citizen engagement activities to further establish means of collaboration. THEORY OF CHANGE RECOMMENDATIONS According to PAR, “Reconciliation entails coming to terms with the past, engaging in constructive dialogue, and transforming old narratives. As such, it requires the transformation of understandings, attitudes, and behaviors that have been forged by armed conflict and inform the ways in which Colombians deal with conflict and differences in their day-to-day lives.” (Operational Definition of Reconciliation, PAR). Under this definition and the structure of the PAR results framework, their activity is structured around two critical axes: Alliances (strategy for individual and collective economic and social development) and Reconciliation (support to enhance reconciliation at the local level). Results from this developmental evaluation show significant progress in the economic development strategies but a lag in the reconciliation axis. PAR interventions acknowledge the importance of including a Reconciliation Approach (i.e. DecidoSer and Gender and Social Inclusion Strategy). Although participants report progress in dialogue, respect, empowerment, and trust at the individual level, there are limited achievements in the social dimensions of reconciliation. There are self-reported improvements at the individual and interpersonal levels of reconciliation, but limited capacity of the Reconciliation Approach to permeate social dimensions of reconciliation such as the family, community, and political institutions. Considering the concept of “…coming to terms with the past” in the operational definition of reconciliation, participants from the CORPOMANIGUA project advanced significantly in the identification of pain, developing strategies for resilience after the effects of armed conflict, and being empowered and actively engaged in political spheres to bring gender and victims issue to the public local agenda. They have been engaged in peace building, reconciliation and psychosocial support for multiple years. On the contrary, women participants from the Minuto de Dios project discussed their negative experiences several times, indicating that they have not been able to heal completely from the pain the conflict and forced displacement caused them and their families. This group expressed a strong sentiment of distrust towards government. “Engaging in constructive dialogue” was a significant achievement of the project implemented in El Manantial Reserve. Enabling spaces for "unlikely dialogues" (diálogo entre improbables) was a significant contribution of this project to reconciliation. However, other projects involving victims of the armed conflict have a long way to go before they can enable this type of dialogue. The beneficiaries, victims of the armed conflict in Manantial Reserve, acknowledged that at the beginning of the project they expressed resistance to sharing spaces with a reincorporated population of the guerrillas. At first, they considered the guerrillas "abrupt, 68 coarse," and were afraid of being extorted. Throughout the course of the project, perceptions of the guerillas changed, until beneficiaries began to consider them "noble and collaborating". Interventions that aim to change narratives must follow initiatives that develop participants’ skills to communicate positive stories about their territories. Nevertheless, positive stories alone cannot transform these territories due to persistent poverty, social exclusion, and violence that affect beneficiaries’ ability to become agents of change. PAR aims to generate pro-reconciliation attitudes and actions (trust, respect, dialogue, and empowerment) via “transformative alliances” – public-private-partnerships with a “reconciliation focus” that produce the following important social transformations: (1) increased social and economic opportunities, such as avenues for political participation, cultural inclusion, and employment; (2) greater awareness that everyone has a role to play in reconciliation; and (3) improved reconciliation abilities – a catchall term for constructive, nonviolent behaviors. The causal pathway from (A) transformative alliances to (B) social and economic transformations is valid and one that can be found behind many development programs. Without explicit reference to the reconciliation focus, however, the causal pathway from (B) social and economic transformations to (C) improved attitudes and actions that promote reconciliation, is harder to ascertain and in the majority of cases evaluated here, were mediated by context factors. Figure 5. Causal Pathway to Reconciliation In fact, it is the reconciliation focus as part of the methodology to produce social transformations that brings the causal logic to life. But expecting significant change without effectively addressing the “connector” problems is a notable limitation which might hamper program’s effectiveness. 69 70 APPENDIX 1. PROJECTS INCLUDED IN THIS DEVELOPMENTAL EVALUATION Region City PAR Code Project Name Implementing Partner Implementation Period Start Date End Date CARIBE Cartagena PAR-03-093 Jóvenes con Valores Productivos dinamizando el emprendimiento Cultural recuperando prácticas ancestrales como aporte a la Reconciliación Youth with Invigorating Cultural Entrepreneurial endeavors and recovering ancestral practice to contribute to reconciliation SURTIGAS 27/02/2018 27/09/2019 Cartagena PAR-03-117 Liderazgo social y económico femenino, caminos para la reconciliación y paz en mujeres víctimas en la localidad 3 de Cartagena Women’s social and economic leadership, routes for reconciliation and peace among victims of Locality 3 in Cartagena CORPORACIÓN MINUTO DE DIOS 27/11/2018 26/11/2019 Ciénaga PAR-03-020 Promover el Ecoturismo en el municipio de Arauca, como oportunidad económica de reconciliación e integración social y vehículo de desestigmatización Promote ecotourism in Arauca as an economic opportunity that will support reconciliation and social integration while reducing stigma CREATA 06/03/2017 31/01/2019 Ciénaga PAR-03-020 Promover el Ecoturismo en el municipio de Arauca, como oportunidad económica de reconciliación e integración social y vehículo de desestigmatización Promote ecotourism in Arauca as an economic opportunity that will support reconciliation and social integration while reducing stigma CREATA 06/03/2017 31/01/2019 Ciénaga PAR-03-053 Generación de espacios de convivencia pacífica, reconciliación y mejoramiento económico de los jóvenes que habitan la zona pesquera de Ciénaga Creation of spaces for peaceful coexistence, reconciliation and economic empowerment for young people in the fishing areas of Ciénaga FUNDEMICROMAG 17/07/2017 16/11/2019 71 Region City PAR Code Project Name Implementing Partner Implementation Period Start Date End Date Santa Marta PAR-03-058 Fortalecimiento de capacidades transformadoras y de comunicaciones juveniles para el desarrollo y la reconciliación en Ciudad Equidad Strengthening of transformative and youth communications skills for development and reconciliation in Ciudad Equidad Fundación Casa en el Árbol 01/08/2017 31/10/2018 CAQUETÁ Cartagena del Chairá PAR-03-074 Cultivando Paz a través del mejoramiento de las condiciones de vida de 340 familias de San Vicente del Caguán y Cartagena del Chairá Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá CORPOMANIGUA 01/12/2017 31/05/2019 Florencia PAR-03-056 Tejiendo territorios de paz, memoria y reconciliación. Empoderamiento de jóvenes y mujeres de Florencia como agentes de cambio y reconciliación Weaving territories of peace, memory and reconciliation. Empowerment of youth and women of Florencia as agents of change and reconciliation Fundación Casa del Pensamiento 14/08/2017 17/09/2018 Florencia PAR-03-071 Pasión Caquetá: Reconcilaición e Inclusión Económica a través del turismo comunitarios en la Reserva El Manantial Pasión Caquetá: reconciliation and economic inclusion through communitary tourism in El Manantial Natural Reserve Cámara de Comercio de Florencia 01/12/2017 20/12/2018 San Vicente del Caguán PAR-03-074 Cultivando Paz a través del mejoramiento de las condiciones de vida de 340 familias de San Vicente del Caguán y Cartagena del Chairá Cultivating peace through the improvement of living conditions of 340 families in San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá CORPOMANIGUA 01/12/2017 31/05/2019 72 APPENDIX 2. REFERENCES INDEPAZ (Instituto de estudios para el desarrollo y la paz) (2019). Todos los nombres, todos los rostros: Informe de derechos humanos sobre la situación de líderes/as y defensores de derechos humanos en los territorios. Abril de 2019. URL: http://www.indepaz.org.co/wp￾content/uploads/2019/04/SEPARATA-DE-ACTUALIZACI%C3%93N-Informe-Todas-las-voces-todos-los￾rostros.-30-Abril-de-2019.pdf Alcaldía del Municipio de Sitionuevo, Magdalena (2016). Municipal Development Plan. URL: https://sitionuevomagdalena.micolombiadigital.gov.co/sites/sitionuevomagdalena/content/files/000021/100 8_plandedesarrolloterritorialsitionuevo20162019_4.pdf Jacqueline de Klerk. (2016, Sept. 22). The slow death of the Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta. The City Paper. Tatis, E. (2019, Feb. 17). Infraestructura para ecoturismo en Ciénaga Grande avanza un 85%. Hoy, Diario del Magdalena. Ministerio de trabajo-FILCO (2016). Composición de los trabajadores cotizantes al sistema general de seguridad social según sexo. Defensoria del pueblo (2018a). Defensoría alerta sobre riesgos para poblaciones indígenas en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta URL: http://www.defensoria.gov.co/es/nube/comunicados/7299/Defensor%C3%ADa-alerta-sobre-riesgos-para￾poblaciones-ind%C3%ADgenas-en-la-Sierra-Nevada-de-Santa-Marta-alerta-temprana-Sierra-Nevada￾Defensor%C3%ADa-pueblo-Kogui.htm Defensoria del pueblo (2018b). Ante el Defensor del Pueblo, indígenas de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta claman presencia estatal para la protección de sus derechos URL: http://www.defensoria.gov.co/es/nube/comunicados/7600/Ante-el-Defensor-del-Pueblo￾ind%C3%ADgenas-de-la-Sierra-Nevada-de-Santa-Marta-claman-presencia-estatal-para-la￾protecci%C3%B3n-de-sus-derechos-Kogui-Defensor%C3%ACa-del-pueblo-carlos-negret-mosquera￾pueblo-nuevo-sierra-nevada.htm Defensoria del pueblo (2019). Alerta por reclutamiento ilícito de menores de edad colombianos y venezolanos URL: http://www.defensoria.gov.co/es/nube/comunicados/7893/Alerta-por-reclutamiento￾il%C3%ADcito-de-menores-de-edad-colombianos-y-venezolanos-venezolanos-desplazados￾Defensor%C3%ADa.htm Alcaldía del Municipio de Sitionuevo, Magdalena. 2016. Municipal Development Drug Plan. URL: http://www.odc.gov.co/Portals/1/politica-regional/Docs/plan-departamental-drogas￾magdalena_2016_2019.pdf LAGARDE, Marcela (1996). Identidad de género y derechos humanos. La construcción de las humanas. 73 Margulis, M. & Urresti, M. (1998). La construcción social de la condición de juventud. URL: https://www.perio.unlp.edu.ar/catedras/system/files/mario_margulis_y_marcelo_urresti__la_construccio n_social_de_la_condicion_de_juventud_urresti.pdf Mwobobia, F. M. (2012). The challenges facing small-scale women entrepreneurs: A case of Kenya. International Journal of Business Administration, 3(2), 112. Suárez, R. (2019, March 22). Sitionuevo, el pueblo con la peor agua de Colombia. Available at https://www.eltiempo.com/vida/salud/cual-es-el-municipio-con-el-peor-agua-de-colombia-340624 Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation (2018). La reconfiguración del Caquetá. URL: https://pares.com.co/2018/07/12/la-reconfiguracion-del-caqueta/ INTERNET REFERENCES NATIONAL POLICE (2019). Criminal Statistics Database. URL: https://www.policia.gov.co/grupo￾informaci%C3%B3n-criminalidad/estadistica-delictiva DANE (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística) (2019). Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares. URL: https://www.dane.gov.co/index.php/estadisticas-por-tema/mercado-laboral DANE (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística) (2018). Estadísticas vitales de nacimientos y defunciones. URL: https://www.dane.gov.co/index.php/estadisticas-por-tema/salud/nacimientos-y￾defunciones/nacimientos/nacimientos-2018 Instituto Nacional de Salud. (2019, June). Sistema de Información de la Vigilancia de la Calidad del Agua para Consumo Humano-SIVICAP (Database). URL: http://aplicacionespruebas.ins.gov.co/sivicap_new/ MINISTERIO DE SALUD Y PROTECCIÓN SOCIAL (2017). Tasa de Mortalidad en Menores de Un Año de Edad. URL: https://www.sispro.gov.co/Pages/Home.aspx News reports indicate the young assassinated belonged to the project, however the partner indicated he did not. Seguimiento.co. (August 2, 2018). Menor asesinado en Ciudad Equidad pertenecía a fundación de Taliana Vargas. URL: https://seguimiento.co/la-samaria/menor-asesinado-en-ciudad-equidad￾pertenecia-fundacion-de-taliana-vargas-16462