Colombia

Colombia Accompaniment Project

By Anne Barstow

In May of 2004 the Iglesia Presbiteriana de Colombia (IPC) sent a letter to the PC(USA), reporting that some of its leaders were receiving death threats and other harassments and asking for unarmed accompaniment.  PC(USA) was not able to respond to this urgent request because of lack of money and personnel trained to do unarmed accompaniment.  Four months passed. Rick Ufford-Chase, who was the Moderator of the PC(USA), visited Colombia at a time of great violence. He returned determined that we must send the IPC aid. The General Assembly Council mandated that we must respond. 

Rick turned to his own organization, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (PPF), and challenged us to figure out how to do it. Using methods from the Christian Peacemakers Team and Witness for Peace, we recruited and trained our first team of six persons. PC(USA) office of World Mission supplied small insurance policies, the services of the One Door registration process and the use of its 24-hour emergency phone. The newly-formed Colombia Mission Network began to send volunteers.  World Mission paid for the CMN's conference calls. Presbyterian Peace Fellowship raised the money for Accompaniment — it costs about $18,000 a year to run the program.
   
The partner church has given so much — a place for accompaniers to stay, daily assignments that turn our volunteers into a protective presence, travel to displaced persons communities where we learned about the suffering caused by war, inclusion in worship and Bible study and in the deliberations of the IPC where we learned how hard and courageous it is to take risks for what one believes the Church must be.

We have now trained 63 volunteers.  Forty-four have served in Colombia and of those, more than 20 have asked to return.  A bond is growing between Iglesia Presbyteriana de Colombia and Presbyterian Peace Fellowship; we learn from each other.