Promoting the empowerment of indigenous peoples in Central America through grassroots partnerships
Who we are
Digno was founded by people who believe everyone has the right to a dignified life. We have fought for social justice and defended human rights for decades.
Administration and Board
Director and CEO
Juan de Dios García
Juan de Dios a has been the General Director of the grassroots indigenous human rights organization, ADIVIMA, in Guatemala for nearly 25 years. His efforts have focused on the search for justice with the surviving families of the genocide committed during 36 years of civil strife in Guatemala. He also represents 33 communities destroyed by the construction of the Chixoy hydroelectric dam in their demands for reparations and community services.
Juan de Dios represented victims of the armed conflict before the Guatemalan government for creation of a National Reparations Program and served for two years on the National Compensation Commission.
Juan negotiated for the 33 indigenous communities for 10 years with the Guatemalan government to obtain a Plan of Reparations and eventually took the case to the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights which he won. He garnered the support of the US. Congress to limit aid to Guatemala until the government (which was refusing to comply) fulfilled the Plan. He is now working on new legislation in Congress to require international financial institutions to compensate indigenous peoples for the damage done as a result of the projects they fund.
For his principles and ideals in his struggle to seek justice, he was persecuted and criminalized by the Guatemalan State and has been granted political asylum in the US where he continues his human rights work and interprets for indigenous peoples in US courts in their native languages.
Chair of the Board
Rev. Peter Morales
Peter is a Unitarian Universalist minister and former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. His strong support of immigration reform and civil rights led to his arrest several times for civil disobedience.
In 2006, he formed a delegation in collaboration with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Colorado, to visit the indigenous communities led by Juan de Dios García in Guatemala. He promoted the founding of the Guatemala Scholarship Partners program to fund education of young students in Guatemala. See https://guatemalascholarship.org
Secretary and Treasurer
Phyllis Morales
Phyllis is a founding member of the Guatemala Scholarship Partners that supports indigenous youth of the Maya Achí people in Guatemala. She has been the liaison between Juan de Dios’ indigenous human rights organization and donors in the US. Now 17 years later more than 70 young people in Guatemala have received the equivalent of a high school diploma and 60 attend middle and high school every year. See our website: https://guatemalascholarship.org.
Phyllis promotes intercultural exchanges between the Maya Achí culture and the North American culture through arranging and guiding delegations to Guatemala in collaboration with the indigenous community.
Board member
Charlie Clements, M.D.
Charlie is the former Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and former president of Physicians for Human Rights.
Charlie has supported grassroots indigenous organizations in Central America throughout his life. As a physician volunteering with the Salvadoran resistance movement, he experienced first hand the profound inequality and brutality to which the indigenous population is subjected. His book Witness to War narrates his observations of the armed conflict in Central America.
He led numerous congressional delegations to visit indigenous communities resulting in significant policy changes in US policy.
Board Member
Dea Brayden
Dea is the former Special Assistant to the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association. In this role, she traveled to Guatemala, India, Ghana, and Haiti. She witnessed and supported fundraising efforts for indigenous communities to access improved education, job prospects, medical care and basic nutritional needs.
Dea is a Court Appointed Special Advocate and works within the court system to help find a safe and permanent home for children suffering abuse or neglect.
Board Member
Paz Lozano
Paz is a Vice President at Emergent, a non-profit organization created to transact high-quality carbon-credits generated through the reduction of emissions from deforestation at a national or sub-national scale. She has spent the past 9 years working to develop projects and programs throughout Central and South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation while supporting the livelihoods of forest communities.
Paz has seen first-hand how critical the respect and protection of the rights of indigenous people and local communities, effective stakeholder consultation and engagement, and robust benefit-sharing mechanisms are to the success of these kinds of programs. Paz holds a Bachelor's of Science in environmental science and a minor in forestry from UC Berkeley.
© Digno 2019 — https://digno.org — 211 Brigadoon Blvd, WA 98382 — 360-775-9506