CEDCOT, the Center for Experimentation for Tzeltal Community Development, has worked for more than four years to support marginalized and indigenous communities in three municipalities in the state of Chiapas, Mexico: San Juan Cancuc, Chilón, and Sitalá. Their projects have focused on zoning and municipal autonomy, alternative solidarity economies, social and economic organization of women, human rights education, and organizational development.

Through last year’s project, “Promoting and Strengthening the Human Rights of Tzeltal Indigenous Women in Chilón and Sitalá, Chiapas,” CEDCOT offered the community tools to fight for gender equality, strengthen women’s leadership, and create and consolidate organizational structures to support women’s individual and collective welfare. They facilitated a series of workshops for 40 indigenous women from four locations in the region focused on understanding human rights and exercising decision-making power in their family, community and municipality. They also hosted a meeting between the 40 women and local and municipal male leaders to increase the incorporation of women’s experiences into governance and policymaking, and to share findings and conclusions from the women’s workshops. They report that the workshops contributed to women’s creation of an educational space for themselves, the Indigenous Women’s House, as well as to a more organized working group comprised of women participants from the four communities, Tseltal Women for Community Self-Management.

In 2017-18, the group proposes to continue their workshops and annual co-ed meetings, expanding them to encompass an additional 20 participants drawn from two new communities in the region. In total, they will engage 60 women from six communities. They hope to form an Indigenous Women’s Network, and to hold an exchange between members of the participants’ six communities in recognition of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.