Description
History
Witness for Peace was founded in 1983, as the Contra War raged in Nicaragua. We established an ongoing presence there and sent U.S. citizens to accompany the Nicaraguan people in war zones and to document the "human face" of the Reagan Administration's military policy. WFP led the way in bringing the brutal facts of those policies home to the U.S. public through grassroots education and large-scale media outreach. During this initial period, WFP established its successful model of merging the powerful forces of on-the-ground documentation, assertive media strategies, a dynamic delegations program, and stateside grassroots mobilization.
Through the years, WFP has answered prophetic calls to accompany people most affected by harmful U.S. policies and corporate practices. Currently, our "witness" is sited in Nicaragua, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia and Colombia. We document the human costs of unfair trade and military policy, transform U.S. citizens who travel with us to our sites, and mobilize a motivated grassroots network of nonviolent, faith-based activists who hold policymakers accountable and work for positive change.
In the past twenty years, WFP developed and maintained an energized nationwide base of 15,000 members, sent more than 10,000 people to Latin American and the Caribbean on short-term transformative delegations, and sustained a highly skilled team of international volunteers in our program sites abroad.
