Nancy Sherman Oct. 18, 2018

 

I went to El Salvador in the mid-1970s with Canada World Youth, and afterwards to Costa Rica, where I started working at the CUSO office with Tim Draimin, around 1975 or 1976. That’s how I learned about LAWG. LAWG became a presence in the CUSO office then, and it continued into the 1980s with Bev and Rick, then Chris and Sheila. I didn't go back to Canada much, so I only met people from the LAWG office when they came down. In those days I never really thought about whether it was a formal or informal relationship. It must have been informal except there was also a coincidence that both organizations seemed to be working on similar agendas or priorities.

 

But it was quite a presence and the co-operative work between the people who staffed the CUSO office in Central America and LAWG people was just a part of the CUSO office in Central America.

 

I came back to Canada in ’85 and became a member of LAWG then. I volunteered a bit at the beginning. I remember Fern Valin taking me under her wing. I really was the fly on the wall, happy to do any work that was needed. If there were envelopes that needed stuffing I was there. I helped with Medical Aid to Nicaragua. And I did some translations. I felt quite honored to be part of a group that was getting out real information to Canadians who were interested in what was going on in Central America Remember, this was in the days before the Internet and before information was really getting out. So, it really did feel like an important enterprise.

 

I think I was on the tail end of the peak of LAWG when I first started. There were a lot of passionate people and a lot of initiatives. I'm not quite sure I remember where the funding came from. But I think that was the beginning. That was the peak and then the beginning of the financial challenges that started to happen over the next 10 years.

 

In Costa Rica, I remember having, I think, one of the first Apple computers that was down there at the time, and it struck me what an amazing invention it was after we were writing all of these things and Xeroxing them or, what was that old way of doing that, newsletters, on that ink and whatever machine. So, I think that was because of a change in the way information was becoming available to people. I do think the way a group like LAWG had been working and what was so important in the past started to change. And in addition, it wasn’t clear, what was the next frontier? And I think people were also aging. People were moving into a different time of their own lives and other career opportunities. So LAWG really was becoming a feeder of people into movements all over; it was like a big ripple. So, in some ways even though the organization as an organization eventually disappeared, the impact of what it did remained. And so many LAWG members continued working in very interesting areas.

 

LAWG was always clear on its principles but it just wasn't where the funders were, or what they were prepared to fund. I think LAWG kept going a lot longer if you ask me because of the generosity of LAWG’s membership and LAWG’s network. I just think the new information age and the new age of the LAWG members that had other responsibilities and other interests changed the situation. I think the external and internal environment told everybody that it had to stop. Or transform into more ripples rather than a cohesive single organization.

 

I’m going to tell you what my personal spin-off was, and it was maybe not so much LAWG, although LAWG continued it, but when I was working in Central America, CUSO was funding a lot of women's projects that I somehow got involved in, like the women of the ceramics in Guaitil [Guanacaste, Costa Rica]. There was a lot of consciousness raising. At the beginning the projects all had to do with raising the consciousness of the women, when what they really wanted to do was make a living. They knew what the problem was, they knew their governments weren’t helping. So, what I came away with was, I wanted to find a place where we could teach skills and do some of the concrete training. So, I gravitated back to the colleges in Canada. And I finally found a place that was like a Disneyland of technical assistance. So, I found that I was able to be a little bit of a ripple from LAWG, I was able to continue to work on projects in Latin America and the Caribbean until probably 1995. And even after 1995 I was able to, when I was permanently out of college as full time, I was able to work a few of the fun, interesting development projects into the international centres projects at George Brown college, and so I guess my takeaway was I wanted to be on the side of things that brought something very, very, concrete and specific to how people learn and earn a living which would give them power to then be actors in their own communities. Just do the consciousness raising, pass the baton along. And then having the resources to do that, continue to make their lives better. That was my takeaway from Central America, something concrete!

 

In the early 1990s, we had an environmental working group at LAWG, when consideration of the environment started to become important for groups, including for LAWG. The group was more than just the environment, it was about socio economic and cultural use of environmental resources. But we couldn’t find financial backing for it and there were other organizations that just had more resources to carry on and do that work.

 

It's funny, you can see glimmers, though, of people still being interested in Central America every so often and you can maybe even trace the ripples back to LAWG. So, the fact that it's not operating as a as a cohesive group anymore doesn't mean the ripples aren’t still being felt. Even things like the Bob Jeffcott Maquilladora [Network], which I hear interviewed still, not a lot but on a regular basis it comes up. So, I think the impacts are still up to, where are we, 2018? That's a pretty good run. When did LAWG start, mid 60s? Yeah. It's a pretty good run.