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An article from Visão oeste

The first Walk for the Culture of Peace, organized by the Sports, Culture and Leisure Secretariat of Cotia, is scheduled for Sunday (26/08) in partnership with a commission of representatives from different religious groups in the city.

The objective of the event is to spread peace, respect and interreligious dialogue, bringing, through culture, respect for the other, showing that intolerance has generated daily suffering around the world.

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(Click here for a Portuguese version of this article)

Can festivals help create peace at the community level?

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The event will begin at 9:30 am in Praça da Matriz, with departure scheduled at 10:00 am. The course will feature music, poetry and dances. The arrival point will be at Joaquim Nunes Square and participants will be welcomed by a cultural feast with food stalls, handicraft exhibitions, open microphone, dance performances, capoeira wheel, samba wheel, among other attractions.

“The proposal is to pave the way for the promotion of respect for cultures. The involvement of different religions in a single event is a way to combat prejudices with expression, fight against segregation, and combat prejudice in a general way, “said Gilmar de Almeida, deputy secretary of the Ministry of Culture.

Still according to him, the goal is that this is a movement that perpetuates in Cotia.

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An article from Diario de Petrópolis

The Community Mediation project of Petropolis is celebrating one year of activity in the municipality. There have been more than 400 visits among students, education professionals and family members. The project began on August 17, 2017, as an initiative of the Mayor Bernardo Rossi through Law n ° 7,532. According to the coordinator of the Municipal Program for the Restoration of Peace Petrópolis da Paz, Elsie-Elen Carvalho, the main objective of the project is to seek solutions to conflicts that are presented and to search for inclusion and social peace.

The major success of the program has been the work in the Public Chamber, located at Av. Koeler, 206, Center. The site, an arm of the project, serves people who are referred by partners such as the Reference Center for Women’s Assistance (CRAM), the community and people who seek the service spontaneously. The Chamber receives cases to be mediated such as conflicts in families and among neighbors, among others. The action consists of listening to both sides and seeking a satisfactory, peaceful solution for both. Mediations can sometimes take more than three months to complete.

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(Click here for the original article in Portuguese)

Mediation as a tool for nonviolence and culture of peace

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“In a year, we have had a lot of results with the mediation here in the Public Chamber. It is a free tool, using voluntary mediators, including some with legal expertise,” said the coordinator.
The program has three projects: School Mediation, Community Mediation and Restorative Justice. The work begins with teaching units, where the team assists and empowers students and teachers in a social and emotional way. Existing conflicts are mediated and guided by the volunteers of the program.
This benefits the school as a whole, since the students themselves learn to solve conflicts by means of the tools presented by the project.
Three schools participate in the school mediation actions: Carlos Chagas Liceu Municipal School, Amélia Antunes Rabello Municipal School and Governador Marcelo Alencar Municipal School. Restorative Justice is practiced in the Municipal Schools Germano Valente, Hercilia Henriques Moret, Pope John Paul II and Professor Nilton Coast.

“The main idea of ​​School Mediation is to stimulate a collaborative atmosphere in schools by creating the habit of dialogue and conflict resolution through solutions presented by those involved who are the main stakeholders. It is hoped that through the use of conflict mediation, the culture of peace will be diffused in school, and in life in society,” according to the pedagogue and psychologist and head of the Department of School Mediation, Vanessa Siqueira.

The program has partnerships with the Secretariat of Health and Citizenship Office, in addition to the Court of Justice, Petropolis police stations, the State and Municipal Councils of Public Security, Procon, Tutelar Council and Universities.

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An article from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees / Canada

On a sweltering afternoon, an elderly couple sit in the waiting room at the free health clinic holding hands, while a young mother waits for a medical appointment with her toddler napping in her lap.

“We welcome anyone in this clinic, we don’t turn anyone away,” says Wendy Espinoza, the health centre’s nurse, who knows everyone in town.

Keeping doors open to all may sound like a simple achievement. But it is a feat in some of the high risk neighbourhoods in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second city.

Local residents visit the medical clinic at the UNHCR-backed Holy Trinity Comprehensive Support Centre in Chamalecon, San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

The patchwork of streets in Chamelecón has for years been an arena for rival street gangs MS-13 and 18th Street, who control their respective territories with an iron grip, destroying communal spaces and severing neighbourly bonds.

Since opening its doors April 30, the Holy Trinity Comprehensive Support Centre has assisted roughly 100 patients per month, most young or elderly and suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes, and respiratory illnesses. But this space, which is located between the gangs’ fiercely contested territories but beholden to none, is more than just a health clinic.

“We don’t just want to cover basic medical services and medications,” says Father Luis Estévez, the local Catholic priest behind the project. “We want this to be a holistic support center for the community.”

Such support is very much needed in Chamelecón which came to world attention in 2004, when gang thugs sprayed a bus with automatic weapons fire, killing 28 passengers as they returned from the centre of San Pedro Sula, just ten minutes’ drive away.

The clinic – founded by Father Estévez, community leaders, and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency – has a key role to play in rebuilding this community, as part of a comprehensive regional support and protection plan.

Known by its Spanish acronym MIRPS, the plan developed by regional governments with UNHCR’s support, seeks to tackle the root causes of displacement in crime-wracked neighbourhoods, as well as strengthening asylum systems and working on durable solutions.

“It’s a place where people can feel safe, where they can be open with each other and they can be protected,” says Yolanda Zapata, the head of the UNHCR office in San Pedro Sula.

As an important first step, the clinic welcomes anyone, regardless of what part of Chamelecón they are from or whether they or their family have any gang affiliation.

This inclusivity is important for nurse Espinoza, who has lived in the area her whole life and splits her work hours between the clinic and the trauma unit of a major public hospital. Gang members and their victims are regular patients there.

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How important is community development for a culture of peace?

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The clinic provides comprehensive primary care, including help to address the mental health needs of the countless local residents who have suffered or witnessed violence.

Since opening its doors earlier this year, it has an on-site psychologist on Saturdays, who now has a dozen local youth as patients. The waiting list to see the psychologist is now more than a month because of such high demand.

“Our patients often have some kind of trauma they are dealing with,” says Karina Ugarte, the young resident physician at the clinic. “Sometimes it’s severe but sometimes it’s just a little frustration they want to get off their chest. But there’s no other space for them to just talk around here.”

Living with violence, or the constant threat of it, has made many residents fearful and reluctant to open up. The clinic prioritizes privacy and discretion.

“Everywhere else there’s always a fear you’re being listened to so you constantly censor yourself,” says nurse Espinoza. “That barrier is broken inside here.”

For the fragile community, the Support Centre is seeking to play a wider role than simply providing comprehensive primary care. Upstairs offices and meeting rooms are quickly becoming a hub for rebuilding the community of Chamelecón from the inside.

As part of a push to reverse years of gang rule, the centre has also begun to reach out to local youth, who are particularly affected by high crime and poverty, and are under constant pressure to join one or other of the criminal groups.

“Young people really aren’t allowed to express themselves because from a young age you learn to stay quiet, and that bleeds over into every aspect of life,” explains Angel Sandoval, a teacher at a local school and the coordinator of the center’s budding youth program. “They need a place where they can express themselves and feel free.”

In their first youth outreach, leaders brought together 1,200 young people and organized a talent show in the park. It was the biggest community event in Chamelecón in recent memory.

Community workers and youth leaders are also organizing technical skills training, art and dance classes, and reproductive health workshops at the centre for young people.

And the leaders – Father Estévez, Sandoval and others – are building a growing network of protection for locals since gang control means victims have nowhere to turn when they are at risk.
“People will come to us and say ‘The gang told us we have 48 hours to leave’ but we as community leaders didn’t know what to tell them,” says Father Estévez.

In response, community leaders are using the support center as a training site to teach local leaders how to refer those in need to UNHCR and other support groups that can assist those who have been displaced from their home.

In this neighborhood, beset by gangs and with a limited government presence, a new generation of local leaders is hoping to change the future.

“Our hope is that in the future when people have any sort of problem or threat, they automatically think of the Support Centre as the place they can come,” he says.

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)