A WACC-supported project is training members of migrant and host communities on both sides of the Colombian–Venezuelan border as citizen reporters to provide accurate information, address common issues, and foster social cohesion.

The Binational School of Community Communication is an integration initiative based on exercising the right to communication, according to Miguel Ángel Silva Rey, director of implementing partner Asociación Cristiana de Comunicaciones Impacto.

He says the project aims to equip children, young people, and adults “to turn their voices into fundamental protagonists of the experiences that shape the social fabric of this territory.”

The WACC partner in Colombia is running the school together with Asociación Civil EscuChamos in Venezuela, with co-funding from Internews.

Enabling migrants to be heard

Colombia is a primary destination for the more than 7 million Venezuelans who have left their country in the last decade.

Rey notes that misinformation has become a significant barrier for Venezuelan migrants as border crossings with Colombia have opened up. Particularly problematic is access to reliable information about regularization of status, basic services, and migrants’ human rights.

There are also limited spaces for integration between the Venezuelan population in Colombia and the communities that host them, according to the Impacto director.

The Binational School of Community Communication is training over 40 members of the migrant and host communities to create radio and video clips with informed content relating to migration. Topics include the right to communication, human mobility as a human right, border citizenship, and sharing experiences of migration.

Some 30 workshops have been held with adults, youth, and children from age 10 living in the area between the Colombian department of Norte de Santander and the Venezuelan state of Táchira.

“This process has given us the possibility of expressing our own opinion in a communicative medium,” reports Victoria Utman, a participant from Venezuela.

Community communication shapes border citizens

The Impacto director says that the project’s overarching objective is to foster positive coexistence, active community engagement, and social cohesion in the border region.

“We aspire to consolidate a space where local narratives intertwine with cross-border dynamics, allowing individual experiences to become an authentic reflection of the cultural and social richness of our community.”

Rey’s vision is reflected in the experience of Christian Coronado, a Binational School of Community Communication participant from Venezuela. “To be a citizen of the border means to be one who identifies with a territory and values it without limits.”