From 15 to 17 October 2012, ARM, in collaboration with Cumbre del Sajama, Fundación Ayuda and Solidaridad, held the Second Regional Workshop of the year for the Latin American network in the city of La Paz Bolivia. This time we gave emphasis to gender issues and participants included miners, NGOs, and experts from around 10 different countries of the Americas and Europe.
"I come from a very humble family in which my father taught me at a young age to go to the mines. (…) I had a husband who died of a brain tumor. I kept going, I kept working. I saw a great need within the municipality of La Llanada. I saw that women do not have a way to participate, how to get to work in the mines, and this is leaving us behind. For that reason I got involved with politics. I am currently councilor to the municipality of La Llanada to see what we can do. How can we move forward with these families? How can we try to help? Because most women are already widows, because our husbands are dying as a result of the pollution from mines. " Rosa Rosero, La Llanada, Nariño, Colombia.
Gender sessions were led by Ana Maria Aranibar (Cumbre del Sajama, Bolivia) and Olinda Orozco (Red Social, Peru), both international experts with extensive knowledge and work in gender issues and mining communities. Participants shared their own experiences and brought to the table a number of topics such as the differences between sex and gender and the conditions of women in the workplace and in the community. All women miners gave their testimony about their daily lives in the mine, the family, and the community. Together, men and women worked with the issues and challenges of women miners, providing important suggestions on how toresolve these matters.
In the regional workshop the issues of trade and export of FT&FM certified gold were also discussed. After a presentation by Kenneth Porter, LAC Projects Officer in ARM, the participants worked in groups to identify key issues, challenges and possible solutions. Ingrid Lozada, Executive Director of AMICHOCÓ, presented the Oro Verde program for ecological gold from El Chocó, Colombia, who works with Biodiversa, their own commercial platform.
Other topics in focus were environmental management, organizational formation and formalization when Ronald Koepke, leader of ARM Producer Support, presented two of the modules of ARMs Training and Advisory Center, and all participants contributed with invaluable feedback. The goal of the center is to promote the sustainability of ASM by offering high quality training and consultancy services in order to improve and transform the ASM sector.
The day after the workshop participants visited the mining cooperative "15 de Agosto" which is working to become Fairtrade and Fairmined (FT&FM) certified. The cooperative, which is located 4 hours from La Paz at 5,000 meters above sea level, is implementing best practices and among other things, they are trying out clean technologies that will allow them to eliminate the use of mercury in their mining operations.
Overall it was a very successful workshop withvaluable involvement of all actors in ASM, miners, NGOs, and recognized industry experts.