Dear friends,
Thank you so much for coming to hear Noah Bullock from Cristosal on Sept. 19. Your good questions and enthusiastic response were encouraging and invigorating. It was especially heartening when you burst into applause at the news of “our” July 13 Supreme Court decision protecting displaced people. We had not experienced that before, and it was a powerful moment for us. Thank you for that vote of confidence!
Many of you have expressed interest in learning more about Cristosal so I am sending a link to a video that is a great intro to our work for those who are new to it, and a good way to solidify your understanding even if you are more familiar. It also makes visible the faces of some of our team and the people we serve.
This past week, we also launched a new home page and Spanish-language side of the Cristosal website, a rich repository of information for those who’d like to dive deeper. We are the leading English-language source of news on forced displacement in the Northern Triangle, so please consider signing up for our monthly e-newsletter and news briefs if you’d like to stay current on these issues that receive so little attention in the U.S. press.
If you were intrigued to delve even deeper, you might consider attending our Global School program. These week-long seminars are a dynamic mix of interactive classroom sessions and field trips to historic and cultural sites as well as communities with which Cristosal works. Participants are drawn from both North and Central America, fostering cross-cultural exchange. Our 2019 offerings can be found here. If you think you might be interested in joining a group attending a Global School conference in 2019, please let me know as several have already indicated an interest and we may be able to get a local group together.
And last but not least, I hope you will consider supporting Cristosal by making a gift. It was the support of friends in North America that gave us the means to be responsive and take on our first case of a displaced family four years ago. Today, that support continues to be the life blood of the organization, helping to fund Cristosal’s core budget and giving us the agility to respond to unexpected needs–whether that’s buying a new truck for a safe house or expanding the legal team for the El Mozote massacre trial. Your gift will be a concrete form of solidarity with the people of Central America that contributes directly to humanitarian assistance for vulnerable people today. It will also yield even greater longer-term dividends by helping to repair broken legal systems, build stronger human rights-based communities, and heal a culture of long-standing impunity and indifference.
I hope that the Sept. 19 gathering was the start of a new relationship or a confirmation of your existing relationship with Cristosal and that we can stay connected. Please be in touch if you would like to learn more. I would be happy to get together over a cup of coffee or glass of wine to talk further.
Thank you again for your interest in Cristosal, and best wishes as we join together to try to bring about a more just world.
Regards,
Gail Rolfe
Cristosal Board of Directors
This is a drawing and poem created by a 12-year old girl while in a Cristosal safe house. She is a member of the family who were the plaintiffs in the July 13 amparo case that ordered the Salvadoran government to protect displaced people.