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page last updated 10-29-2018

IF 160 Sunflower Lane Watsonville, CA 95076 Phone: 831-724-4108

About IF

IF is a nonprofit humanitarian, educational and social change organization located in the Santa Cruz, CA, area. We are a community of friends seeking hopeful alternatives to the violence, greed and destructiveness of our world.
Read more about IF's history and mission

IF Fiscal Sponsorships

IF offers Fiscal Sponsorships to qualified groups to facilitate their fundraising. Read more about Fiscal Sponsorships

Upcoming Fundraising Events and Activities

Winter Solstice/Light and Darkness Celebration
Saturday, December 15 at 4:30 pm
Potluck - No Charge
hosted by Bill and Karen Cane,
Lake Freedom, 160 Sunflower Lane, Watsonville

RSVP appreciated, 831-724-4108

Make Reservation

Updates on some of IF's supported projects

LOCAL INITIATIVES:
IF is proud to announce recent grants to local organizations addressing the needs of vulnerable communities and promoting positive social change:
Pájaro Valley Climate Action, Mesa Verde Gardens, The Center for Farmworker Families and Watsonville Wetlands Watch.

Center for Farmworker Families

Watsonville Wetlands Watch

Mesa Verde Gardens

Pájaro Valley Climate Action

Mexico: Update on Sergio Castro/Yok Chij
For over 45 years Sergio Castro (Yok Chij) has been working within the indigenous Mayan communities and marginalized Mexicans of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, one of the poorest states of Mexico. Don Sergio spends most of his time providing medical and wound care to burn victims, and, with increasing frequency, patients suffering from the effects of type 2 diabetic complications.
For calendar year 2017, Don Sergio provides 120-160 patients visits per week, which equates to around 7,800 patient visits per year. Don Sergio does not charge any fees. This healthcare is costly due to non-reusable wound care dressing supplies and daily or every 2 - 3 day visits depending on type and severity of wound and co-morbidities.
He is a “one-man-wound-care clinic” and is always moving, hence the name ‘yok chij’, Maya language, Tzotzil for ‘deer foot’, because he’s always moving.
Don Sergio's project activities are regularly updated on his blog by Patricia Ferrer, who has worked with him for nine years, @ http://sergiocastrosc.blogspot.mx DONATE to SERGIO CASTRO & YOK CHIJ.

July 2018 Update
This July Bill Hill and Penny Rich, two former members of the IF Board, made a trip to visit Sergio Castro and Yok Chij in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
Accompanied by our grandchild, Rafaela, a recent high school graduate, we brought 70 pounds of much needed medical supplies to donate to Sergio’s clinic. We also brought an equal weight of school supplies for Sergio to distribute to schools that he has helped construct and renovate.
We coordinated our visit with the annual visit of Patricia Ferrer, who has been IF’s contact for Yok Chij in the U.S. Patricia, who has worked with Sergio for over 10 years, also brought medical supplies to donate to Sergio’s clinic. She was accompanied by her pre-med nephew Ethan, Deborah, who is a wound expert, and Alejandra, who volunteers at Patricia’s clinic in Tucson. All assisted Sergio in providing primary care and wound care to his patients.

Patricia assists Sergio in their treatment of a 90 year old patient with wounds to his feet

On the first day of the visit, we were invited to attend a graduation ceremony at Escuela Primaria Bilingue, a

school that Sergio has built. It was a wonderful ceremony to witness and the importance of this day to the graduates and their families was quite evident. Students of many grade levels participated in entertaining with traditional dances and speeches. This school teaches in Tzotzil, an indigenous Maya language, and Spanish. It serves approximately 300 children.

Sergio Castro congratulates parents and students on their graduation at Escuela Primaria Bilingue.

Last year IF facilitated a donation to purchase and install a solar system for the school. Now the school has electricity and a water pump, meals can be cooked without burning wood or paying for natural gas, and the school does not have to rely on costly grid electricity.
On another day of our visit, we accompanied Sergio and Patricia’s team on home visits to patients in the city and in the outlying communities. Often these patients were too ill or injured to get to the clinic. We also visited Sergio’s clinic in the late afternoon on a number of days. There was a steady stream of patients to be attended to, with ailments that varied from minor to those suffering from extensive diabetic- or vascular-induced wounds.
read more about Don Sergio's work in Chiapas, Mexico

Watch the slideshow below which highlights our visit.

Mexico: Update from Pietro Ameglio

IF continues to support the courageous work of Pietro Ameglio in Mexico and beyond. IF's support has been integral to Pietro being able to devote himself full-time to nonviolence education and organizing. Pietro is one of the most important nonviolent activists in Latin America today in the specific sense of promoting both the study and the practice of active nonviolence. He has a sophisticated knowledge of nonviolence theory and history, and he combines that with a deep commitment to social justice and decades of front-line experience in nonviolent action. He is an inspiring and popular peace educator who walks his talk, who educates in formal settings as well as on picket lines and at mass actions. Below is his most recent update.

Watch a 15-minute video entitled "Weaving a Culture of Peace in Mexico". This video describes the work of the Peace and Nonviolence Collective in Mexico City, a group of young activists that emerged from some of the classes Pietro taught.

Cuernavaca, December 29, 2017

Dear friends of IF,

The year is ending and I wanted to renew my communication with you and to share something of this past year which has been too fast and intense for all of us, for you with Trump and for us for the relentless, high level of violence that we are experiencing. (2017 was the most violent year in Mexico in 20 years.) The year has passed in the blink of an eye. I often wanted to stop for a moment and collect my thoughts but it seems that I was never able to do so. So let me try now.
A short time ago, I received a message from a good friend in Colombia, someone very committed to peace and nonviolence, and someone wise about hope. In it he said, “We have many goals, and we work for them, doing everything we can, but with the certainty, so as to not lose hope, that it does not depend on us. It is Life that does the necessary tallies. And along the way, that awareness adds a bit of humility to our efforts.”
In “God’s sense of humor”, to quote a phrase of our mentor Fr. Donald Hessler, life has united us in a collective, communitarian project of nonviolent struggle for justice and peace in Mexico. That is something I never forget. Our collaboration with you gives me strength but also a greater sense of commitment and responsibility.
The ending of one year and beginning of another lends itself to deeper reflection about what we have done and what we want to continue. We can share details about our activities at another time, in the annual report that we always send. Turning to that sense of the deeper strategy of this past year, I have come to see, based on my continual observation of our social movements and struggles and of this state of my life, that the key task is the formation of young people who can continue and improve all the justice and peace processes in which we are involved and who serve the poorest and most marginalized communities, ethnic groups and persons. I have seen too many times how very constructive processes fall apart because key leaders are forced to pull out, whether because of violence, repression or different kinds of personal situations. The Achilles heel has been not thinking carefully about who will be able to continue the process with at least equal or greater force. It is imperative that we deal seriously with the challenge of assuring the sustainability of social struggles and the building of a culture of peace and nonviolence, without over dependence on specific leaders.

SERPAJ Activists

When I speak of formation in peace and nonviolence, I am referring to the development of persons with the capacity to think critically and autonomously, with their own head, not simply repeating the actions and phrases of other great leaders which in the present context may not be useful or may even be risky. There is a strong tendency to emulation because of the great leaders that have existed in history. In this sense, the formation of young people, assisting them to learn to think for themselves, takes a lot of time and lots of reading and direct experience of different kinds of civil resistance.
I have been deepening my reflection on how to make real in my practice the phrase of John the Baptist who responded when asked about Jesus: “I must decrease, he must increase.” Fr. Donald always challenged us with the exhortation that the children should be “better” than their parents, the students should be “better” than their teachers, etc. During this past year, we have seen some significant growth in the number of youth who have joined our Peace and Nonviolence Team at the UNAM (National Autonomous University) and there are now 20 who now have at least three years working together and who

have greatly deepened their commitment and their knowledge. This process has included a number of international exchanges lasting from several weeks to a year. These include the Escola de Cultura de Pau (Culture of Peace School) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Gandhian university in Ahmedabad, India and the summer course offered at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey [editor’s note: Former IF board member Pushpa Iyer is the director of that program]. These exchanges have enabled us to connect with and even become part of important international nonviolence networks.
At the same time, on the national scene, the enormous levels of violence and social fear and the catastrophic earthquakes in September have opened opportunities for us to do what Gandhi called “Constructive Program” in many communities in Mexico City and central and southeastern Mexico and to develop new ties and networks for the future. We also undertook a campaign across the entire UNAM, including graphics, articles, performances and workshops, to promote community reflection on how peace can only be the fruit of justice and community organization and not the result of more police, fences and the closing of public spaces, as the authorities are insisting. We also undertook actions to pressure the university authorities to provide legal, technical and political support for the families of university students who have been disappeared or murdered.
All of this capacity-building work and nonviolent action for peace help us to be better equipped, organized, committed and linked in networks of action and mutual security in the face of all the violence that may be coming with the presidential election in July 2018 as well as with the repercussions of the draconian Interior Security Law that was recently approved. Representatives of the United Nations and Amnesty International have criticized the new law as a grave threat to human rights because it gives the armed forces and the president carte blanche to confront whatever they consider threats to “internal security” (which seem to be primarily anything that threatens the money of investors). That includes marches and demonstrations. It is yet another way of increasing the criminalization and repression of social movements.
Finally, I want to share a bit about my involvement in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, which is being promoted by many religious and laypersons around the world. It began with an international conference at the Vatican in April 2016 and the work continues now through a number of commissions. I am part of Roundtable 5 on the theme of “The Power of Nonviolence.” One of the key objectives is for Pope Francis to issue an encyclical on nonviolence and “Just Peace” that would supersede traditional Catholic Church teaching on “Just War”. I don’t know what will come of this initiative. It would be a bit of a miracle if the Pope issued an encyclical that proclaims an explicit commitment of the global church to nonviolence. But I am encouraged by the commitment and enthusiasm and excellence of the people involved in the project. And the initiative was able to draft an historic statement on peace and nonviolence that was the basis of the annual proclamation that the Pope issued on the occasion of the World Day of Peace last year (January 1, 2017).
Well, perhaps I went on too long, but these are some basic reflections on the legacy of the past year and the challenges that 2018 poses. I am so grateful for your support and confidence, which mean so much to me. I trust that, in whatever form it may take, we shall continue to confront those challenges together, in body and spirit, with humility and determination.

Peace and joy for you and your loved ones,
Pietro
Read more of Pedro's activities in Mexico.