*** Bolivia: ESCR and Popular Communications Programme - Dignity International, in cooperation with Unión Nacional de Instituciones para el Trabajo de Acción social (UNITAS) and the Instituto de Investigación y Acción para el Desarrollo Integral (IIADI) of Bolivia is pleased to report on the activities of The ESCR Popular Communication Programme. The Programme had the goal to improve the capacities and the use of tools in neighbourhood organisations for the design and execution of Popular Communication strategies and campaigns with a Human Rights approach.

Using the contents and methodology of Dignity Programmes this course was organised thorough three modules and sixteen sessions. The Programme was realised two weekends per month from 6 April to 3 July 2010, with the participation of 20 members of neighbourhood organisations from El Alto and La Paz cities in Bolivia. The Programme was also supported by experts like the former People’s Defender (Defensor del Pueblo) of Bolivia Waldo Albarracin, the main advocate of the protection of Human Rights in the country.

The ESCR Popular Communication Programme allowed the participants to achieve a deeper understanding of Human Rights as an authoritative and political framework and also as a sort of tools and legal mechanisms that potentially improve the rising of demands from Civil Society toward State. With that, the ESCR Popular Communication Programme could work deeply in the discussion and analysis about Popular Communication and its usefulness to develop strategies and campaigns for the incidence on ESCR.

The course encouraged us to design or adapt educative tools that useful to link Popular Communication and Human Rights issues. The group of participants of the course achieved cohesion and self organising capacities in order to put in practice a Popular Communication Strategy to promote the right to water that is one of the most urgent issues in this city also affected by the climate change and the melting of glaciers, the main source of water of the region.

*** First Programme of Capacity Building and Strategic Intervention in ESCR, Bolivia - For the first time, Bolivia was the scene of a Dignity International Programme in Human Rights. The same was organised by UNITAS and IIADI with the Support of Secours Catholique (Cáritas France). From 7 to 13 of July, thirty social movements and NGOs representatives were part of an intense and motivating experience of collective learning and commitment reinforcement with Human Rights.

Participants from all over the country, and different areas of incidence like environment, gender, development, land and territory, urban populations rights, education, and indigenous & cultural rights, joined in Colcapirhua – Cochabamba, a department in the core of the country known for its struggles in defense of the right to water.