As of the decade of the 90s, EPES incorporated the specific issue of violence against women and girls as part of its work in holistic preventive health and health advocacy. In 2000, we conducted the first research on couple violence, with the focus on sexual violence, seeking to influence public policy as well as assistance and prevention services. Backed by data, our strategy encompasses action at three levels: training staff and women from local organizations, training health care personnel and local educators, and networking to expand community awareness and mobilization concerning violence against women and girls.

During the social crisis arising from the pandemic, violence against women increased. The prolonged quarantines obligated women to remain at home, often in small spaces which they had to share with their aggressor. Mandatory restrictions on mobility meant  household and caregiving work increased for working class women, limiting their ability to generate income.

The assessments undertaken together with women from organizations and neighborhoods of El Bosque, San Ramón, Hualpén, Penco, Talcahuano and Concepción understands violence as a multi-causal, structural phenomenon of a highly patriarchal, neoliberal and racist society. This set of circumstances points to the urgent need to support the strengthening of women’s ability to exercise the right to a life free of violence. In order to bring this about, EPES emphasizes training and updating of knowledge concerning gender violence, women´s shelters, human rights, sexual and reproductive rights, and self-care, thus broadening the scope of community action, to include dialogue on local wisdom, popular education and participatory assessment processes, to identify the many different expressions of inter-sector violence that affect women, girls  and gender diversity. The approach also includes the creation of spaces for reflection concerning the caregiver crisis, weaving networks of support and making visible women’s collective caregiving initiatives.

Since 2019, EPES has undertaken initiatives that address the needs of the immigrant population, especially Haitians, who live in El Bosque. We have developed campaigns to promote immigrant health rights, to help build communities that are inclusive and welcoming, overcoming language and cultural barriers, within a framework of respect for human rights, while also taking into account gender inequalities.

This work has resulted in the compilation of considerable information at the local level about barriers that impede access to public health services for the immigrant population. Our efforts include education and know-your-health- rights initiatives for immigrants and the general population, as well as communicational strategies for making visible the living and health conditions of the immigrant population.

The project seeks to strengthen immigrant community organization and participation. With this in mind, we provide support for activities held by the Haitian immigrant organization UNHAPROCH (Unión para el Progreso de Haitianos en Chile) of El Bosque. Our work strives to strengthen territorial collaborations with institutional and municipal health care professionals, while also fostering linkages with regional and national immigrant and immigrant advocacy organizations to support advocacy, denunciation and mobilization actions for the right to immigrate.

Another area of work has been the production and distribution of educational and informational material about the right to health and related to the Covid-19 pandemic, produced in Spanish and Creole, aimed for the immigrant population and health care services. In order to ensure cultural appropriateness, a Haitian facilitator participated in the activity planning and translation of material.

In the complex context of political and social change, coupled with economic uncertainty and climatic threats, the EPES Foundation contributed from its experience in popular education to the task of strengthening the capacities of community organizations, working class women, and health teams to advance the promotion of the right to health, social rights and well-being in their communities.

The social movement that ignited in Chile in October 2019 changed the country’s political horizons. It opened the way to the constitutional process currently underway, to replace the constitution imposed in dictatorship in 1980. The new constitution will be drafted by a constitutional convention, elected by the people, characterized by gender parity and with representation from indigenous people. The majority of convention delegates agree that the government must guarantee the right to health, social rights, and human rights. Regarding health, they agree not only on the need for free access to health but also that health care must be dignified and timely.

EPES promotes participation and organization for health in working class sectors, community organizations, and social groups to enable people to exercise their rights to health, in the context of the pandemic’s impact on health and our social-economic well-being. Along these lines, it carries out the following initiatives:

a) Provides training and methodological guidance to health groups and organizations formed by EPES in Santiago and Concepción, in order to promote community action in health locally, support for developing their work plans and visibilizing their experiences.
b) Promotes reflection and self-care initiatives in mental health for community organizations.
c) Participates in local, regional and national social coalitions for the right to health.
d) Institutional reinforcement.

Over the course of the EPES Foundation’s 40 years of community education work, numerous disasters have impacted vulnerable sectors of the population. In the 1990s, floods affected low-income neighborhoods of Concepción, earthquakes and tsunami struck in 2010, forest fires ravaged communities such as Penco in 2017, and fires destroyed extensive areas of the densely populated hills of Valparaíso.

In the 1990s, floods affected low-income neighborhoods of Concepción, earthquakes and tsunami struck in 2010, forest fires ravaged communities such as Penco in 2017, and fires destroyed extensive areas of the densely populated hills of Valparaíso. In each and every one of the situations mentioned above, poverty, houses built at inadequate places such as wetlands, overcrowded conditions, houses in close proximity of pine and eucalyptus tree plantations (mono-cultivations), water scarcity, and the lack of social security magnified the impact of these disasters.

EPES strengthens the resilience of community organizations’ capacity for coping with natural disasters and the effects of climate change, by developing strategies for training and promoting popular participation.

Chile is one of the countries most affected by the disasters arising from climate crisis. The lack of water, a crisis in food and livestock production, landslides and as an earthquake-prone territory are some of the factors that make it especially susceptible to such catastrophes.

EPES has extensive experience in addressing emergency needs in a participatory manner, together with the population directly affected by the situation. It also has promoted community participation in the process of acquiring, distributing and public accountability for resources appropriated for disaster support actions.

EPES supported efforts by vulnerable communities in northern and central-southern Chile affected by disasters to organize. The key factor involved concrete actions for addressing problems related to health, provision of basic needs, protection of temporary housing after earthquakes, as well as the effects on mental health, caregivers’ crisis in families and communities.

EPES is a member of ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together), an international interfaith organization that brings together more than one hundred aid and development organizations, backed by churches.