Participatory and Healing Methodologies with ANFASEP Women: A Collaborative Learning Project.

Based on collaborative work carried out with women, family members and volunteers of the National Association of Relatives of Kidnapped, Detained, and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP), we aim to present and analyze the development of a collaborative and healing methodology emerging from the dialogue between indigenous and urban identities. More specifically, members of ANFASEP and ourselves - the researchers - worked together to develop a deeper understanding of their collective, relational, and personal political agency within the framework of various projects conducted between the Institute of Democracy and Human Rights of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (IDEHPUCP) and ANFASEP from 2017 to 2023. The projects focused on three main areas: (i) capacity building through political education programmes, psychosocial support, and communication; (ii) advocacy for public policies and strengthening ANFASEP's relationships with its surroundings; and (iii) socially responsible research. The interventions began by engaging the members and their families, eventually leading to a deeper involvement of the members, resulting in a university certification - offered by the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) - as emotional supporters in the search for missing persons. Finally, we note that in the last stage, the members, their members' families and ANFASEP volunteers took on an active role in designing and implementing projects as a result of the previous knowledge exchange between the organization and academia, transforming social and institutional relationships and collectively contributing to the advocacy for missing persons' search policies. On the one hand, this process has allowed for the identification of the personal and collective knowledge and experiences of the ANFASEP members, leading to the creation of a participatory and healing methodology from their own agency to strengthen their exercise of citizenship. On the other hand, it raises questions for academia regarding its formative processes, methodologies, and approaches to indigenous communities, offering a decolonial analysis from diversity, interculturality, and recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]