La Colectiva: a Community Based Response to GBV

Come help us to build a Community Response to gender based violence with La Colectiva!

¡Ven y ayuda a construir una Respuesta Comunitaria a la violencia de género con La Colectiva!

We are Reimagining alternatives to erradicate Intimate Partner Violence from a community-based response

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is one of Mexico's most prevalent types of violence. In the first years of the Covid-19 pandemic the number of reports increased. The response from the justice system failed to provide safe and efficient answers, and the services are yet unable to consider the efficiency of working with communities. Seeking a solution to an urgent problem a change of approach is needed. 

During 2022 several women, some of us IPV survivors or daughters of IPV victims, started a community project that places victims' needs in the centre to build a community-based response (CBR) while aiming for structural changes, we had many discussions and looking for a solution we wanted to be part of the ones taking action. This year the goal is integrate of at least one community committee that addresses the issue of IPV in coordination with one public policy in a burrough in Mexico City, the aim is to have a learning safe place to promote ideas about the coordination and intervention over the services and demands of IPV victims and survivors and promote the implementation of concrete actions. 

We think this CBR alternative is a very practical way to put in practice concepts and needed alternatives to issues with the goal not only to provide options for women to exit from violence but also to be a part of a transformative process where communities engage, participate and create meanings from the reality we live in.

With your help we will be able to:

1. Continue our research: We are gathering and questioning the avilabe information about gender violence in Mexico, also, identifying services that adress IPV and the oportunities to improve from a CBR point of view. Also, we plan to offer alternatives to services to be victim centered, we no longer want services that are made for us but without us!

2. Improve our work: Ypur support helps us to don't stop knoking on doors. We are in the process of designing and implementing a learning safe space to dialogue about the concepts of IPV and to define an action plan for one public policy, at least. As a need stated from members of La Colectiva, we are designing group meetings to discuss in a safe and ethical way about our experiences and needs, but we need resources to access information and sistematize this information.  

3. Helping us to continue to desing and print information about our actions: All the information we have we want to share it with others. With your support we can print flyers, make podcasts, videos and other materials to continue to spread information about the data we have, the one we don't, how the concepts about gender violence are made, what will it look like if we organize and build a solution to IPV and what we gain by looking at gender violence as a community issue. This approach is not something founded by local or national fund so your help means the world for us.