MAGALY QUISPE, the Bolivian AVP wonder worker, is scheduled to talk to us about her work in Bolivian Prisons on Saturday Sept 21, 11 AM at the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting worship space at 1420 Hill St., Ann Arbor MI.
Magaly Quispe is a Bolivian Quaker and, like most Bolivian Friends, is ethnically Aymara (Aymaras are one of the two largest indigenous groups in Bolivia). After getting her bachelor’s degree with help from the Bolivian Quaker Education Fund, she became director of the Bolivian Chapter of the Alternatives to Violence Project. Beginning in a single prison in 2006, AVP has expanded, under Magaly’s leadership, to most of the major prisons in Bolivia. Friends who have traveled to Bolivia have visited two of them with her (once with students), and have been floored by the near-universal respect she commands from both prison officials and from inmates (who, in Bolivian prisons, largely self-govern their life on the inside). She has also built greenhouses that allow prisoners to grow some of their own food and, outside of prison, initiated a series of domestic violence prevention programs in high schools. Finally, she runs a “study home” for rural students who live so far from a high school that they’d have to drop out without the nearby lodging AVP provides. An amazing person. See this story about Magaly’s work in Friends Journal.