The Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM) and MIT D-Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched the project “RISE: Resilient, Inclusive & Sustainable Environments – A challenge to address gender-based violence in the small-scale mining sector” in June 2020.
Since that time, they have conducted surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups with 25 women miners in two regions in Antioquia, Colombia to understand their experiences with gender-based violence (GBV), and, as GBV is often coupled with environmental degradation, ecological destruction in the communities where they live.
This blog post spotlights one of the women miners who lives and works in the region of Andes, Antioquia, Colombia. Her testimonial reflects many of the aspects of women miners’ lives that ARM and MIT D-Lab have learned about in the last four weeks as we collected data to inform a program we are now implementing to build women’s mining associations.