ABOUT
The organization Asociacion Campesina of Antioquia (ACA) has 20 years of experience organizing, training and defending human rights of rural communities in Antioquia, in the northeastern part of Colombia. ACA was established in 1994 to work towards the empowerment of men and women and for the advancement of a more democratic society by promoting: organizational growth through community building, youth and women’s leadership, sustainable agroecological production, and historical memory reconstruction via the Arts and culture.
The Asociación Campesina de Antioquia (ACA) works jointly with regional, national and international platforms and networks that are dedicated to orienting and supporting a participative joint construction of small-scale farmer/peasant communities organizational grassroots processes. ACA is currently affiliated with the following:
– Coordinador Nacional Agrario de Colombia. (CNA)
– Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo. (CLOC)
– Vía Campesina. (Movimiento Campesino Internacional)
Brief History
The ACA was born as an organizational process of rural communities affected by economic policies imposed in the country in the beginning of the 90s. The ACA was constituted and legally recognized in 1994. Many of the leaders and associates of the ACA were victims of political violence, dispossession, and forced displacement. Later on, the social base of the ACA tried to reconstruct the social and organizational fabric in the hillsides of the city of Medellín, working jointly with the various social and human rights organizations at the local, regional, national, and international levels. Since the year 2005, the ACA has focused its commitment once again in the rural sector, promoting the integral reparation of the displaced small-scale farmer communities and the recuperation and legal protection of dispossessed territory. Currently, the ACA supports and constructs life plans with various campesinos in three regions of the department, some in the process of return to their lands, others displaced to the town centers, or others in close rural settlements with the intention to return to their lands. Through the ACA´s areas of work, it is committed to a communicational strategy, that constructs audiovisual historical memory of the processes, as well as visibilzes them; a legal strategy that provides tools and legal consultation for the protection of goods and the exercising of rights of the population victim to the social and armed conflict that Colombia experiences; and an investigative strategy that documents, analyzes, and publishes information related to the themes that interest, affect, and propose the campesino communities and the communities in condition of forced displacement.
Mission
The Asociación Campesina de Antioquia (ACA) is a non-profit entity coordinated and working jointly with platforms and networks in the regional, national, and international spheres, dedicated to the orientation, support, and participative joint construction of the organizational grassroots processes of the campesino, or small-scale farmer, communities and those who have been forcibly displaced from their lands in the department of Antioquia, through various programs and projects.
Vission
Small-scale farmer communities coordinated and organized in processes of empowerment with the capacity to impact public policies and the capacity of dialogue with international, governmental, and social organizations of national and regional character, achieving the reconstruction of the social fabric in terms of an autonomous perspective of wellbeing.
INSTITUTIONAL OBJECTIVE
Promote the strengthening of organizational grassroots processes of the campesino communities and the population in the condition of forced displacement, contributing to the campesino movement through support, orientation, and the development of processes of formation, organization, mobilization, and investigation that promote the empowerment, dialogue, and reconstruction of the social fabric of these communities.