Blog

23/10/2020

The Peacebuilding in Primary Schools Project

Fiona Oliver-Larkin, Edinburgh Peace & Justice Centre’s PeaceBuilders Programme Coordinator, reflects on how being imaginative during COVID can get the job done.

As the coordinator of a team of people who usually work in-person in primary schools all across Edinburgh, when lockdown happened I was full of questions, such as ‘When will the schools go back? What is it going to be like when they do? When will we as a team get back into schools? What can we do to help now?’

If I can put that into context - PeaceBuilders is a team of facilitators who run courses in primary schools in Scotland aimed at supporting class groups to build a culture of peace and give them some tools for conflict resolution. Since 2015 we have worked with more than 50 class groups in primary schools across Edinburgh, and in one school in Glasgow. Based on principles of nonviolence, we work through dynamic activities, such as cooperative games, circus skills and drama coupled with circle time reflection, to support the Health and Wellbeing aspects of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence.

We have seen the positive impact that the work we do can have, on self-esteem, cooperation, teamwork and empathy. We have had really positive feedback from students, teachers and parents.

But since March, we just haven’t known when we will be able to return to schools.

So I started calling up schools. I wanted to get a picture of the best way PeaceBuilders could help out once schools went back and if there was anything we could do now to help.

One thing I found that was really helpful was this resource from Peacemakers in Birmingham. It’s a brilliant resource from a dedicated and diverse team of specialists. I highly recommend it. Needless to say I sent it round to all the schools we have worked with.

I found that schools were full of the same questions that I had. Speaking to one head teacher we have worked with closely, I suggested we could try running our regular course over Zoom. She explained that the problem was, post-lockdown, their timetables would be changing all the time, and it might not be possible for classes to make a weekly commitment. She suggested that instead, we make a series of films, so that classes could access the sessions as and when it suited.

Luckily, one of the PeaceBuilders facilitators is also a film-maker, and two of the team members are flatmates, so even with COVID restrictions, they will be able to create the films.

Teachers across Scotland will be able to use these films to help children talk about their experience of the pandemic and lockdown, as well as providing a full PeaceBuilders course that can be accessed at any time, and into the future. It has all just taken a bit of imagination. We set up a crowdfunder to help make it happen (https://chuffed.org/project/peacebuilders-video).

Once we are able to get back into schools, we’ll be able to offer a follow up programme of training for both teachers and kids in Restorative Practice, Nonviolent Communication and Peer Mediation, as well as our regular PeaceBuilders Cooperative Games Course (https://peaceandjustice.org.uk/projects/peacebuilding-for-primary-schools/ or

contact me at peacebuilders@peaceandjustice.org.uk ).

16/10/2020

A Conversation On Migration

Danny Sweeney, Justice and Peace Scotland’s social justice coordinator, reflects on contrasting views of migration.

“Francis did not wage a war of words aimed at imposing doctrines; he simply spread the love of God”

This is how Pope Francis speaks of his namesake in the opening paragraphs of Fratelli Tutti (Brothers and Sisters all together), his latest encyclical signed in Assisi and released on the Feast of Saint Francis.

Sadly, as many of the ‘people of good will’ to whom the Pope has addressed his latest teaching were starting to read it, Home Secretary Priti Patel was setting out plans on migration that seemed to go against all Fratelli Tutti suggests.

In the previous week, leaked documents had detailed some possible solutions to what the Westminster government sees as the refugee “problem”. Wave machines in the Channel to “swamp the boats” and the Australian model of “offshoring” were apparently on the agenda. Despite Australia’s treatment of refugees on islands in Papa New Guinea having been condemned by doctors, human rights experts, the United Nations and Parliamentary enquiries, the Home Secretary had in mind for those seeking sanctuary a volcano in the South Atlantic some 4,000 miles away from the UK.

At the Conservative Party Conference, Ms Patel made claims about the illegality of seeking asylum and in a speech I felt lacked compassion, she diminished the hopes of those fleeing persecution. She dismissively compared their struggle to find a country where they would have the best chance to find safety and rebuild their lives to “shopping around”.

In his encyclical, Pope Francis refers to “people of good will”. The Home Secretary called such people “do gooders” and lumped them together with human traffickers, “leftie lawyers” and the Labour Party, all “defending the indefensible”, something she said “[she] would never do” - the “indefensible” being to aid those seeking asylum.

Pope Francis famously began his pontificate by visiting Lampedusa to pray for those crossing the Mediterranean. The fourth chapter in Fratelli Tutti is titled A Heart Open to the Whole World and Pope Francis speaks of the limits of borders, and the gifts we all gain from sharing of ourselves and learning from other cultures. I was saddened to think that on the same day that Pope Francis launched his document seeking fraternity, the UK Home Secretary made a speech in direct opposition to all that document says.

I can only pray that “do-gooders” (and “leftie lawyers”) continue to lend a sympathetic ear to those Pope Francis describes as “fleeing from war, violence, political or religious persecution, from natural disasters including those caused by climate change, and from extreme poverty”, adding “Migrants ‘remind us of a basic aspect of our faith, that we are ‘strangers and exiles on the earth’ (Heb 11:13)”.
That description comes from his document Christus Vivit, in which he wrote, “I especially urge young people not to play into the hands of those who would set them against other young people, newly arrived in their countries, and who would encourage them to view the latter as a threat, and not possessed of the same inalienable dignity as every other human being.”

I’m happy to be lumped in with the “do-gooders” and “leftie lawyers, Ms Patel.

Join Justice & Peace Scotland’s Conversation on Migration to hear first hand experiences from the UK borders (Tue, 27 October 2020,19:45 – 21:00 GMT). Book through this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/conversation-on-migration-tickets-122206736639

09/10/2020

‘This is the world we live’

Alex Holmes has just returned from another spell volunteering in Calais and here he reflects on life for refugees there. Weekly blog.

“Every time you leave home, another road takes you into a world you were never in.” begins the poem For the Traveler by John O’Donohue, a favourite of Yoel’s that he’s handed to me to read as we sit by the fire. The poem ends “Return home more enriched…”

But where is home? What is home? Yoel decides that ‘home is where I can be myself’. Medhane says ‘Home is a place where you adapt to live…Here we have already adapted to the situation where we are. This is the world we live.’

‘Here’ is Calais, rebranded as ‘Ville Fleurie’, the town that blooms with razor wire, security walls, surveillance cameras, and armed police. Place of methodical camp dismantlement. Of near zero tolerance towards the exiled.

Natacha Bouchart, Mayor of Calais, has said ‘I refuse that Calais be exposed once again to pressure from migrants whose impact has been the focus of the news for these past weeks. Calais has suffered too much, her residents have suffered too much, for me to tolerate a situation that has profoundly affected us.’

‘This is the world we live…’ Away from the fire, a staccato of hammering. Aman is using a lump of rock to knock nails out of a piece of wooden pallet. Hanes is removing screws from some found timber. Project sport: they’re constructing a pair of wooden push-up handles. ‘Sport is good’ says Aman. A small rock flies by, aimed at a rat. More sport.

Further away, haircut completed, Henok is having his hair washed. He’s removed his jacket and shirt, and leans over while Senai pours water from a plastic flagon over his hair. Shampoo, more water, job nearly finished, when Henok darts away and grabs a mirror fragment to have look. He laughs. Henai laughs too. A little later beside the fire, Teodros rubs and massages Henok’s head. A sudden and brief metamorphosis; usually Henok says nothing, looks vacantly ahead and rubs his hands continually. The guys say he was beaten up in Germany. They lovingly care for him, make sure he eats, takes a shower.

Clothes festoon the nearby bushes, drying in the sun. The new security fence dissecting the path along which the guys’ tents are pitched is adorned with festive bunches of yellow flowered hawkweed. Tomorrow is a holy day, Kidus Yohannes, the Eritrean Orthodox New Year.

‘This is the world we live…It’s random,’ Isaias tells me. ‘Every two or three days the police take a few people into detention. They detained me and took my cross, the first time in my life someone has removed my cross. I cried and cried. The police sent an old woman to see me. She said “Don’t worry, they will return your cross to you”. After four hours they let me go. People are detained for 24 hours or 3 days. But they detained me for just four hours. God answered my prayers. My father taught me to pray. Always pray he said. Not just when things go wrong.’

‘Where is home?’ I ask him.

‘Home is now. Home is wherever I am. Even when I was in the detention centre, that was home. I am at home because God is inside me, always with me.’

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