Let's change the story: Women weaving community protective networks to rewrite their own story

Abstract

Migrant women suffer from intersecting forms of violence, facing physical, emotional, psychological, and social consequences, many of which persist throughout their lives and across generations. Therefore, within the framework of research aimed at co-constructing a community protective network to prevent this issue, reflections were made on the individual and collective transformations observed during this process through a dialogue of knowledge with and among Venezuelan migrant women. The methodology followed a mixed-methods approach, grounded in community-based participatory action research. This included a diagnostic phase; intersectoral collaboration with civil society, and public and private institutions; training of facilitators based on topics and methods proposed by the women themselves; planning and implementation of peer-to-peer educational workshops; execution of community-level interventions; and an empowerment-oriented evaluation integrated throughout the project. Significant transformations were observed in the research protocol, which shifted from the public health paradigm to a collective health perspective. This shift was necessitated by the nature of working with the community, which draws on its own individual and collective resources, including cultural and traditional knowledge, ensuring greater empowerment and stronger commitment from participants to interventions they themselves proposed. Community protective networks are natural spaces intrinsic to collectives. They are generous in effort and teamwork, driven by shared goals with which everyone commits as they are endogenous interventions—conceived, nurtured, and developed within and by the community.