Search Results for el salvador

Change Agents 7/2/20: The IPM Immersion Program in El Salvador and other places

Producer/Host: Steve Wessler

Key Discussion Points:
a) Does the Immersion program provide a benefit to the people from the host country (such as El Salvador)?
b) How does the Immersion program benefit the North Americans who travel to host countries?
c) Why each of the guests have dedicated their work lives to human rights work?
d) What is hard for the two guests about their work on human rights issues?

Guests:
Joe Cistone, Executive Director of IPM lives on Mount Desert Island.
Adela Zayaz Hernandez, Regional Director for the Latin America and the Caribbean and Director of Programs and Partnerships. She lives and El Salvador.

Joe Cistone and Adela Zayas Hernandez direct IPM’s Immersion program, along with other colleagues. The Immersion program brings North Americans to spend 7 to 10 days time with social justice and human rights programs in countries across the globe. 2500 people from North America have participated in this program.

Joseph F. Cistone, Chief Executive Officer
As Chief Executive Officer of IPM, Joe provides the strategic vision, leadership, and supervision of all activities, programs and staff of this interfaith, international, non-governmental organization with offices in El Salvador, India, Kenya, and the USA. Joe began his work with IPM in June of 2001 and IPM has quintupled in size during his tenure.

Joe has worked, lived, and studied internationally for over 30 years, including extended time in El Salvador, India, Kenya, Nicaragua, and Italy—where Joe pursued a Ph.D. in the Social Sciences at the Gregorian University and worked with a variety of international organizations. Joe was a Research Assistant in the Department of Programmes at Caritas Internationalis (1990-1992); the Director of the Joined Hands Refugee Center (1991-1995), where he served as an IPM Project Coordinator; and, as Associate Director of the International Office for Justice, Peace, & Integrity of Creation of the Franciscan Friars Minor (1995-1997). Immediately prior to joining IPM, Joe served as the founding Vice President of Capital, Endowment, & Philanthropic Programs at the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland Foundation.

Adela Zayas, Director of International Programs & Partnerships; and Programs & Regional Director for Latin America and The Caribbean
Adela studied her Psychology Major at Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” (UCA). She was evolved in different social movements during her educational process, including projects related to environmental consciousness and conservation, community development, gender equality and women empowerment. She has post-graduate diplomas in Gender Equality and National Reality provided by the National University and the Lutheran University from El Salvador.

She also helped creating a non-profit organization in El Salvador, “Fundación Artesanas”, which promotes healthy environments, using art, social entrepreneurship and psychology as the main tools to achieve women’s empowerment. It mainly seeks to offer solutions for the unequal opportunities, in terms of education, health, employment and political participation, that many women experience in the country.

About the host:
Steve Wessler will soon will be starting his 28th year of working on human right issues. He founded the Civil Rights Unit in the Maine Attorney’s Office in 1992 and led the Unit for 7 years. In 1999 he left the formal practice of law and founded the Center for the Prevention of Hate. The Center worked in Maine and across the USA. He and his colleagues worked to reduce bias and harassment in schools, in communities, in health care organization through workshops and conflict resolution. The Center closed in 2011 and Steve began a consulting on human rights issues. For the next 5 years much of his work was in Europe, developing and implementing training curricular for police, working in communities to reduce the risk of hate crimes, conflict resolution between police and youth. He has worked in over 20 countries. In late 2016 he began to work more in Maine, with a focus on reducing anti-immigrant bias. He continues to work in schools to reduce bias and harassment. Wessler teaches courses on human rights issues at the College of the Atlantic, the University of Maine at Augusta and at the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in northern Virginia.

WERU Special 3/29/07: Don Pablo Alvarenga of El Salvador, Part 2

Producer/host: Amy Browne

Local historian Don Pablo Alvarenga in Cinquera, Cabanas, El Salvador, in January 2007, speaking about the history of religion, politics and war in the area.

Part 1 aired 3/27/07 and is also available on these archives.

Part 3 will air on RadioActive on Thursday, April 5th at 4p.m., and the final segment will air on RadioActive the following week (Thursday, April 12th at 4p.m.)

Maine Currents 4/6/21: Dennis Chinoy on The Deep Roots and Bitter Fruits of White Supremacy

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

We continue our series on racism and hate groups with a recent presentation sponsored by the Maine Multicultural Center. From their website: “The Maine Multicultural Center is a community-driven group representing Bangor-area business, cultural, and educational organizations. We promote community enrichment and economic growth by attracting, retaining, supporting, and integrating people of diverse cultures and backgrounds into greater Bangor.
Since Fall 2016, we have provided welcoming services for New Mainers, while celebrating and promoting the racial, cultural, and ethnic diversity that already exists in the region. The Maine Multicultural Center offers presentations, conversations, community and teacher workshops, a database of resources, and opportunities for those in and around Bangor to meet neighbors and new friends, whether they are recent immigrants or longtime residents.”

Presenter Dennis Chinoy is a cofounder of PICA (Power in Community Alliances), a group that focuses on economic and social justice. Among other things, PICA has been a driver behind the Bangor sister city relationship with Carasque, El Salvador, MOFGA’s partnership with farmers in El Salvador, and WERU’s sister station relationship with Radio Sumpul, a community radio station in that county – and Dennis Chinoy has played a role in all of those endeavors. His presentation last month, sponsored by the multicultural center, was titled “The Deep Roots and Bitter Fruits of White Supremacy”. It has been edited to fit in this time slot.

View the entire, unedited presentation here

About the host:

Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices and Maine Currents, she also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and the First Place 2017 Radio News Award from the Maine Association of Broadcasters.

RadioActive 11/1/18

Producer/Host: Meredith DeFrancesco

Environmental and Social Justice: Root Causes of Migrant Caravan and Political Violence in Central America and US

Key Discussion Points:

a) This week, we again turn to the thousands of migrants travelling together from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala towards the US to seek asylum.
b) We look further at the political repression experienced by Hondurans since the US supported 2009 coup and at the environmental, human rights and economic impacts mega-projects have had on the population.
c) We also reflect on the connections between the recent hatred fueled violence in the US and the demonization of immigration.

And, as November 6th deadline for public comment looms, we look at the Trump Administration’s attempt to repeal the 1997 Flores Amendment, which prohibits the US federal government from holding migrant children in detention centers for over 20 days.

Guests:
Grahame Russel, director of Rights Action
rightsaction.org/
Reporting by Sandra Cuffe, travelling with caravan:
www.aljazeera.com/profile/sandra-cuffe.html?fbclid=IwAR0v8J89VkxRSHqITwwKVTX-gePFbZrWxTyrVscakQLOOV2hrLp94kb8Fo4

Dennis Chinoy, US El Salvador Sister Cities, PICA (Power in Community Alliances)
www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org/
www.pica.ws/

Information on Flores Amendment: familiesbelong.org/flores?

RadioActive 10/25/18

Producer/Host: Meredith DeFrancesco

Migrant Caravan from Central America: Root Causes and Human Rights

Key Discussion Points:

a) As thousands of migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala travel in a caravan through Mexico towards the US, we speak with Patricia Montes, executive director od the immigrant rights organization Centro Presente, in East Boston.

b) We look at the root causes, and connections to the United States policies, including poverty, unemployment, gang violence and political repression, including following the US backed coup in Honduras in 2009.

c) We also look at human rights impacts, as the Trump Administration seizes on the caravan to inflame knee jerk, anti-immigrant sentiment during the mid-term election, now saying he will “call up the US military and close our southern border.”

Guest: Patricia Montes, executive director, Centro Presente , www.cpresente.org/