UNHCR / NANSEN AWARD LAURETE

STORY: UNHCR / NANSEN AWARD LAURETE
TRT: 3:25
SOURCE: UNHCR
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CREDIT UNHCR ON SCREEN
LANGUAGE: SPANISH / NATS

DATELINE: 5 JULY, 28 – 29 AUGUST 2020, LA GUAJIRA, COLOMBIA

SHOTLIST:

5 JULY 2020, LA GUAJIRA, COLOMBIA

1. Wide shot, Mayerlin Vergara Pérez walking through the town of La Guajira, Colombia
2.Various shots, Vergara Pérez walks over bridge on coast
3.Various shots, Vergara Pérez seated, writing in her notebook

28 – 29 AUGUST 2020, LA GUAJIRA, COLOMBIA

4.Various shots, Vergara Pérez meeting young woman with shacks in background
5.Various shots, Vergara Pérez speaking with women (Ed Note: faces and identities concealed)
6.SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Mayerlín Vergara Pérez, UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award laureate:
“They’re very vulnerable. They come to us full of pain, full of sadness and hopelessness. And our home becomes a space, a refuge, in which they can be themselves and they can be wrong. They can fall down and can get back up.”
7.Various shots, shacks and temporary structures in La Guajira
8.SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Mayerlín Vergara Pérez, UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award laureate:
“Watching their pain transform into a smile, watching negative feelings transform into dreams – for me that’s priceless.”
9.Med shot, children’s playground in La Guajira
10.Various shots, Vergara Pérez in meeting with UNHCR staff at UNHCR offices in Riohacha
11. Various shots, street scenes and people in La Guajira

STORYLINE:

Mayerlín Vergara Pérez has made it her life’s mission to help children free themselves from the yoke of sexual violence. In recognition of her work, which now benefits Venezuelan refugees and minors as well as Colombians, she has been named the laureate of the 2020 Nansen Refugee Award, a prestigious annual prize honouring those who go to extraordinary lengths to support forcibly displaced and stateless people.

Mayerlín Vergara Pérez, 45, who goes by her nickname Maye, assisted hundreds of the roughly 22,000 children and teens that the organization she works for, a Colombian NGO called Fundación Renacer, has served since its founding 32 years ago.

Rescued from the street corners, brothels and bars where they are forced into sexual exploitation – sometimes by human trafficking networks – or removed from abusive families, the children under Maye’s care have gone through almost unimaginable trauma. Their recovery process is a long and tumultuous one.

A devout Christian, Maye volunteered recently to spearhead the opening of a new residential home in La Guajira, a northeastern border region of Colombia which has seen a spike in child sexual exploitation among refugees and migrants fleeing the ongoing crisis in neighbouring Venezuela. Some five million Venezuelans have left their country in recent years, fleeing food and medicine shortages, galloping inflation and widespread insecurity. An estimated 1.8 million of them have sought protection in Colombia.

Fundación Renacer’s home in Riohacha was born in the wake of a two-month-long reconnaissance mission to the border region with Venezuela in 2018 during which the team identified hundreds of children who were being sexually exploited. At least half were refugees and migrants from Venezuela – some of whom had made the journey to Colombia with their families, others alone, and still others who had been trafficked by criminal networks.

Over the course of its first year, this new home provided a safe, therapeutic space to 75 children and teens – some as young as age seven.

Currently, around 40 children live in the sprawling, two-story home, which includes four dormitory-style bedrooms and is built around an interior courtyard with two towering mango trees. Some 80 per cent of those in the home are girls, many of them indigenous Wayúu and Yukpa, whose communities straddle the Colombo-Venezuelan border.

A rigorous daily schedule packed with individual therapy, group sessions and educational activities provides the children order and structure while also giving them the space and time they need to process their trauma. A team of more than a dozen professionals, including teachers, a psychologist, a social worker, a nutritionist and a lawyer, are on hand to help them rebuild their lives, a process that generally takes about a year and a half. Once they are able, the children resume their studies, and over the years many have gone on to lead fruitful careers.

In recognition of her work, Maye has been named this year’s laureate of the UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award, a prestigious annual prize that honours those who have gone to extraordinary lengths to support forcibly displaced and stateless people.

The Nansen Refugee Award is named in honour of Norwegian explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen, the first High Commissioner for Refugees and Nobel Prize winner, who was appointed by the League of Nations in 1921. It aims to showcase his values of perseverance and commitment in the face of adversity. UNHCR also recognizes regional winners.

Maye’s prize will be presented by in a virtual ceremony to be broadcast on UNHCR platforms in Spanish on October 4 and in English on October 5.