Interamerican Cooperative Institute/Instituto Cooperativo Interamericano (ICI)
www.icipan.org
ICI has forty years of experience and recognition in Latin America as an adult education centre, training leaders of organizations of marginalized peoples. The Institute was founded by Rev. Harvey Steele S.F.M. from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, who outlined its goals and philosophy in 1974 as follows: “ICI prepares young men and women as leaders, motivated and qualified technically to lead others, to assist them to recognize and understand their common problems, and how to look for solutions through communal action.”
ICI’s mission is support for the integral development of popular organizations in Latin America that will allow them to find viable socio-economic alternatives that contribute to social transformation in their home countries.
Beneficiaries are the 480 men and women who have participated in courses and workshops at ICI. Sixty percent of the organizations that send representatives to be trained at ICI will be adapting and implementing the knowledge, instruments and/or methodologies learned by their members at ICI.
Ngobe Cultural Action/Acción Cultural Ngóbe (ACUN)
ACUN works for the protection and promotion of the rights and cultures of Indigenous peoples in Panama, in particular the Ngobe-Bugle (formerly Guaymí) people which are Panama’s largest Indigenous nation with a population of approximately 164,000. The organization provides services and resources to marginalized communities aimed at strengthening the legal framework for and the holistic development of the Ngobe people. The primary source of income for the Ngóbe is subsistence agriculture, with many families, including children, traveling to coffee plantations during the harvest season, a practice that makes continuing education difficult. Poverty, malnutrition and illiteracy are widespread. Basic services such as running water, electricity and paved roads are scarce. The Ngóbe -Bugles live in small-scattered communities over a wide and mountainous area not easily accessible, which impedes the establishment of official government schools.
