CoDev's 2017 Executive Director's Report

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Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00

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CoDev's 2017 Executive Director's Report r1 ... A big thanks to all those who came out for our Annual General Meeting on Thursday, September 14. We were so pleased to host Matt Eisenbrandt who read from his book, Assassination of a Saint. For those who could not attend, we thought we would send you the Executive Director's Report as it was presented to us by Steve Stewart. If you have any questions or would like more information, please reach out to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. CoDevelopment Canada Acting Executive Director, Steve Stewart Acting Executive Director Steve Stewart Report to the 2017 Annual General Meeting

I am pleased to be here as Acting Executive Director of CoDev. I have worked at CoDev for the past 19 years and it is interesting to try on this new role. CoDev is a very special place to work, with a capable, dedicated staff, a committed board, and absolutely amazing Latin American and Canadian partners. It is quite exciting to be a part of larger movements working to make the world a better, more just place.

With your support, our Latin American partners achieved impressive things in the past year. Our women’s maquila organization partners in Central America continue to defend workers from the worst excesses of their transnational employers: Our teacher partners continue to strengthen women’s leadership and to advance democratic teaching methods in public schools: And our community partners advance in local economic development and strengthening good public health care. But I want to focus today on some achievements that illustrate what distinguishes CoDev from many other Canadian organizations doing good work around the world – and that is our deep roots in social movements working for structural change.

Most of our 23 Latin American partners’ work goes far beyond their local communities and contributes towards just change at a national level. The projects that CoDev and our Canadian partners support may seem comparatively small, but they are part of that bigger transformative package.

For example, last year with the support of the BCTF, we began a small project with indigenous teachers in Veracruz, Mexico. The group is part of the national democratic teachers’ movement - the CNTE - who in May last year launched a national protest against constitutional reforms aimed at privatizing education and penalizing teachers. They were met by violent state repression that left 12 dead, and dozens of others injured or imprisoned. At the request of our partners, when Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto came to Ottawa that June for the “3 Amigo’s” Summit, CoDev launched a campaign urging Prime Minister Trudeau - a teacher - to condemn the violence against Mexican educators. Hundreds of you responded to our online action, and at a June 28 press conference with Pena Nieto, Trudeau did just that.

While Trudeau’s appeal for dialogue with the teachers was largely ignored in Canada, it was picked up widely by the Mexican media. Our Mexican partners credit this campaign as the final straw that pushed Peña Nieto to sit down and negotiate with the teachers.

So thank you to those members who responded to the appeal and sent messages to Prime Minister Trudeau.

When citizens rose up last May In the Colombian port of Buenaventura against the death-squad neoliberalism that had left most of the population marginalized, threatened, displaced or dead, they were able to articulate their demands due to a series of popular assemblies that our Colombian partner NOMADESC had trained residents in organizing. And, during the 3-week long general strike, NOMADESC’s human rights monitors were in the streets documenting the repression by the Colombian government’s notorious counterinsurgency police.

In the end, the government was forced to negotiate with the Buenaventura General Strike Committee, reaching an agreement to invest hundreds of millions in such neglected public services as housing, education, healthcare, infrastructure and water and sewage systems, as well as to take steps to rein in paramilitary violence.
Also last May, Colombia’s national teachers’ federation FECODE launched a national strike that involved tens of thousands of teachers, and was met by repression that left 3 educators’ dead. Prominent in the accords that ended the strike is an agreement by the government to incorporate into the national curriculum new teaching methodologies for Peace and Reconciliation developed by FECODE in a national project supported CoDev and Quebec, Ontario, BC, Surrey and Vancouver teacher organizations.

As members of CoDev, you are a key link in this chain of solidarity between Canadian and Latin American social and labour movements – a link that makes possible deep and lasting change that addresses the people’s immediate needs and structural causes of inequality, poverty and marginalization.

If you wish to strengthen that link, I encourage you to become a CoDev monthly donor. Donor contributions enable us to carry out important work in Canada that is not directly supported by our partners. These include coalition efforts to encourage the Canadian government become a more positive influence in the region - to ease off on its unconditional support of Canadian transnationals operating in Latin America, its support for repressive regimes, and to restore funding it has cut from international human rights bodies.
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