The Flooded Plain

There are fears the global financial turmoil could drive more children to become fighters for Colombia's rebel groups as the country's poorest people suffer the fallout of the economic slowdown. Colombia's Marxist guerrillas and paramilitary gangs often recruit children as fighters and spies and the government estimated that as many as 8,000 children were still caught up in the four-decade-old conflict. They entice child soldiers by offering money, a lucrative lure for the impoverished children.

In this innovative multi-media project, several ex-child soldiers wanted to share their experiences. They saw the cross between comic books and fantasy novels as a powerful way to teach about what they had learned, suffered, and overcome in their years at war. "The Flooded Plain" is based on the stories of their lives, though both fictionalized and fantasized as a way to see their own lives as a fable. With this cyber-comic book, published serially every week, they have taken their suffering and turned it into art.

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Ex-child soldiers are breaking down stigmatization as they try and reintegrate themselves into their communities.