In November, Violeta Molina-Natera, director of the Javeriano Writing Center in Colombia, sent out an invitation to the Writing Center Listserv to stand in social-media solidarity with participants of an academic conference in Venezuela, who are facing considerable economic and political challenges.

Un saludo de la Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia UNAD desde Palmira y Cali, Colombia #RLCPE y #EstoyconEndil2014.

— CarmenEugeniaPedraza (@carmeneupedraza) November 20, 2014

Sending love to our comrades in #RLCPE from chilly (but sunny) Baltimore. #EstoyconEndil2014 pic.twitter.com/gA63cBSrjB

— TU Writing Center (@TUWritingCenter) November 20, 2014

S/O to our Writing Center friends in Venezuela! Writing Rocks! from Stone Writing Center-Del Mar College, TX. #RLCPE #EstoyconEndil2014

— Stone Writing Center (@theSWC) November 21, 2014

After the conference was over, I asked Violeta to share more about the exciting work that her writing center is doing, along with others in Latin America. Her responses are below, in her own words.

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About

I’m the director of the Javeriano Writing Center (or Centro de Escritura Javeriano, in Spanish). This is the first writing center in South America and maybe we turn on the light about writing centers in this part of the continent because after we began other universities started their writing centers as well. We work with undergrad peer tutors in Spanish tutoring (sometimes we helped with papers in English if we have bilingual tutors available, but it’s not common that student come to our center for papers in English). Our tutors not just tutoring, but they prepare materials and resources for our website, they prepare and make workshops about writing, and they use to write articles for our digital journal.

Also, they have to work with administrative issues because we don’t have a secretary or receptionist, so all the team are the front desk. I work with other colleague who is the WC academic coordinator and she helps me with many functions that I can’t handle. I accompanied the process of creation of some writing centers in Colombia and in other countries, and every time that I can, I go to conferences to talk about writing centers. The truth is that when I started the WC I haven’t any close colleagues who give me a hand with do’s and don’ts, so I had to research alone in books and on the internet. That’s why I think if someone is starting a new writing center perhaps it could be helpful to show him or her the experience of my center and that has been so far.

Latin America Writing Center Association

Over time other writing centers were created and I got to know some others that already existed in other countries, so I though it was time to know each other and recognize the work of our centers. In our case there are writing programs that don’t tutoring but they provide wonderful services, so we work together WP and WC. In 2013, I organize the first conference in Latin America to meet the WPA or WCD and it was amazing because people were waiting for this opportunity. In that conference there were people connected from other countries too because they couldn’t come personally. We decide organize us initially as a network while we know the dynamics of networking and understand what it means be an association. I think this will be the challenge for our next conference, in September, 2015, in Bogota, Colombia.

There are now 17 centers in Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and Chile. It’s important to say that there are a few of them that call themselves writing centers, but actually they are not a writing center because they don’t have tutoring and there are cases that is a web resource center. People from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina and Colombia gathered together in 2013 in Cali, Colombia, to get to know each other and to share experiences based on the work we have been doing in our centers. We had a videoconference with Nathalie Signh-Corcoran, Kevin Dvorack, Rachel Holtz and Kim Ballard from IWCA. They gave us a greater understanding of the work done by regional associations in the U.S. and prompted us to work as a regional association. We have a Blackboard site with links, documents, references, forums and Collaborate meetings where we discuss different topics.

Currently we are working in a Blackboard platform and with a Google Group. The first one is for share documents and for virtual meetings with Collaborate. The second one is for communications. I hope to work or find help to work in a modest website in order to be visible this year. At present I going to share a constitution letter that officially establish that we are a network and maybe help people to gain some institutional commitment to participate in our activities. That will help us too to be officially members of IWCA.

Political Challenges

As I told everybody in my list-serv message, I couldn’t go to Venezuela for political issues. The Twitter campaign was successfully and some people at the conference know about that. Many people from US share regards and wishes and I loved it. Unfortunately, many people at the conference didn’t have any idea because organizers don’t tell them, because they where busy and don’t see my emails in those days. I think this is a problematic situation that interfere with academic life, maybe government don’t like preparing people to think too much. They are going through difficult times and it’s more important to figure out how to feed your family with the half (or less) of your professor salary than how to create a new writing center in a university with no support for them. It’s important to know that this situation is in Venezuela. The rest of us are struggling with the same financial issues that you have, but thank God, we don’t have this situation. For people from the rest of the world the most important think to do is know that this is happening right now. There are student killed by the government for protest or think different and teachers can’t speak out for fear. It’s really sad.

The internet services are blocked or restricted just in countries with political issues, like Venezuela. Recently join to our network a colleague from Cuba and they have the same problem. That affect their ability to get the information and be connected, but they manage it. It affects us just in cases that they can’t be connected for virtual meetings or be informed or participated in discussions.

Conclusion

Thank you very much for your interest in knowing about what we are doing and what is happening in Latin America. I appreciate that a lot.

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Editor’s note: I’m fascinated to learn more about the work our colleagues are doing around the world. One of the primary reasons I decided to work with the CWCAB team was the opportunity to talk to people like Violeta. In the months ahead, we’ll be continuing to highlight great writing center work around the world—we’d love to hear from you!

Have a note of encouragement, or a question for Violeta? Click here to comment!