International Women´s Day

Last week we celebrated International Women´s Day a day early, on March 7th with a youth fair focused on providing information for women´s rights and prevention of gender based violence. International Women´s Day is a BIG deal here in Nicaragua, which was a surprise to me considering I had never even heard of it before I came here. That´s a bit ironic considering the roots of the celebration are in feminist movements in the U.S., but it doesn´t seem to get the kind of attention up north as it does here. In Nicaragua, it is both a day of activism of demanding fair treatment and a day of celebration of women. At CANTERA-Ciudad Sandino we organized the Feria Juvenil with the youth movement (MOJUV) to provide a space for young people to come together and reach out to the community with information on a very important theme here. We invited different government institutions such as the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Family to come set up an informative stand and share information, as well as non-government organizations to share the work that they do in the community. Because our strength at CANTERA is our socio-cultural program (which is how most of the youth we work with get involved), we also organized a cultural program throughout the day. There were traditional and modern dance groups, music and popular theater presentations on themes of violence and gender equality. All of this came together with several weeks of planning and organizing to encourage other organizations to participate. We were thrown a real curve late in the planning process though: we found out the afternoon before the event that due to Hugo Chavez´s death, we would no longer be able to hold the Feria in front of the City Hall, since the entire country is in seven days of mourning! We had to scramble to move the event, but we found a way to make it work. We set up camp in the street outside the CANTERA center, and although it wasn´t as central as the City Hall, there was still a good crowd checking out the informational stands and the cultural acts. And as a friend pointed out to me after the event, the best part about it was that we literally took back the streets! We were dancing and doing theater in the street, reaching out to the community on a grass roots level. Check out the MOJUV facebook page for lots of pictures of the event, and hopefully for some video clips soon. Que vivan las mujeres! http://www.facebook.com/groups/78089564763/?ref=ts&fref=ts