Voices of Recovery is a project that aims to strengthen the voice and promote recognition of the needs and capacities of communities facing intersecting risks in Latin America, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The hope is that this collaboration can help these and other communities to more effectively shape decision-making processes around sustainable recovery.
The project, which commenced in 2022, seeks to:
- understand the long-term social, economic and cultural impacts of the pandemic, and the conditions that have influenced how communities were affected
- recognise the recovery needs of communities, as well as the capacities and strategies they have developed to cope with, resist and recover from these impacts, and
- support communities to strengthen their collective voice in shaping and developing actions that contribute to a more equitable and sustainable recovery.
We use approaches rooted in the humanities and social sciences, and view stakeholder engagement and capacity strengthening as part of the substance of our research activities. The project includes researchers, organizations and communities from Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and the United Kingdom. In Brazil, the project works with traditional and indigenous communities in the state of Pará. These include a number of communities that live in two Sustainable Use Reserves, the Tapajós-Arapiuns Reserva-Extractiva (RESEX) and Tapajós Bosque Nacional (FLONA) reserves, as well as Quilombola communities living adjacent to the cities of Cametá and Belém . In Colombia, the project works in the municipalities of Marquetalia (Caldas), Florencia and La Montañita (Caquetá) with organisations and collectives of young people, rural women and survivors of the armed conflict. In Peru the project works in the provinces of Satipo and Chanchamayo, in the central region of the Amazon with two indigenous organizations in two areas of the central jungle: the Asháninka Central of the Ene River (CARE) and the Organization of Asháninka Indigenous Women of the Central Forest (OMIAASEC). Within these areas, we worked on the ground with three communities: Shankivironi, San Jerónimo and Potsoteni .
RESEARCH PARTNERS:
– University of East Anglia
– Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru
– Universidad de Caldas, Colombia
– National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters, Brazil
– Federal Universidade do Pará, Brazil
– University of Edinburgh
