Date of Award
Spring 2019
Document Type
Restricted Thesis
Terms of Use
© 2019 Zackary S. Lash. All rights reserved. Access to this work is restricted to users within the Swarthmore College network and may only be used for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes. Sharing with users outside of the Swarthmore College network is expressly prohibited. For all other uses, including reproduction and distribution, please contact the copyright holder.
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Peace & Conflict Studies Department
First Advisor
Sa'ed Atshan
Abstract
The Republic of Colombia has long been associated with violence and internal strife; however, since the signing of the 2016 peace accords between the Colombian government and the FARC, the country has come to symbolize peace—rather than war—for the first time in its history. Within the emerging post-conflict framework, I recognized an opportunity and need to work with marginalized communities affected by the armed conflict. In response to the government’s ongoing peace process, whose structural limitations privileged the consolidation of “negative peace” at the national level, my team and I sought to contribute toward the construction of “positive peace” at the local level. Guided by the principles of Design Thinking, in 2017 we carried out a community assessment in the municipality of Plato Magdalena, the results of which fed directly into the creation of a community-building workshop tailored to recognized needs in the village of Aguas Vivas. Our initial prototype would go on to serve as the basis for subsequent programming carried out in 2018. The first program brought together students from different municipal communities to learn how to collectively tackle salient issues through the Design Thinking process; their work would directly inform the second, as they refined and helped carry out a reiteration of our original community-building workshop in the village of Zárate. This, our work thus far, constitutes the first steps taken Fundación Saltamontes Network, now a registered NGO in Colombia. The report that follows tracks this trajectory.
Recommended Citation
Lash, Zackary S. , '19, "Saltamontes Network: Constructing Positive Peace in an Era of Negative Peace" (2019). Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards. 956.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/theses/956