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Dear friends of EPES,
In these turbulent times, I find it comforting to witness examples of people moving forward and working to create a better world, amid and despite the uncertainty.
That is why I find the work of EPES so inspiring: In the face of dictatorship, earthquakes, fires and floods, they have persisted for more than four decades in the quest for health and dignity for all. In this Update, you’ll read of EPES’ ongoing work on food sovereignty and community gardening, strengthening community action for women’s rights, and defense of migrants’ rights.
And not just on the local and national scene. As you’ll read in this Update, they have shared their local experience and taken their advocacy for migrants’ rights to international forums: the Second Regional Review of the Implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the International Congress on Migration and Human Mobility. The Update also includes a salute to EPES Concepción, which closed its doors in January.
Its legacy will live on in the women whose lives have been transformed by their involvement with EPES and who continue to exercise leadership for change in their communities. Finally, the Update of course includes a report on the 14th International School of Popular Education and Community and Participatory Strategies in Health, which brought together 19 participants from 9 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Escuela, as it is known, is another way in which EPES continues to sow seeds of change in Chile and internationally.
I opened my last letter to you with a quotation from Rebecca Solnit, and will close this one with another nugget of wisdom from her: “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognise uncertainty, you recognise that you may be able to influence the outcomes—you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.”
EPES provides an example of absolute refusal to be immobilized by uncertainty. Your continuing support enables EPES to continue to provide that example, and in so doing, transform a multitude of lives. For that, you have our profound thanks.
In solidarity,
Christina Mills MD FRCPC
Board President
Action for Health in the Americas 