e-Uxolo
Periodic Newsletter
of the Quaker Peace Centre
e-Uxolo
Periodic Newsletter
of the Quaker Peace Centre
Vol. 3, no. 1 June 2007
Dear Friend
We are five months into the year and project work is moving forward at a fast pace here at the Quaker Peace Centre! With our leaner, more focused organisation, productivity in the field has started to be balanced by reflections on our work in the form of publications.
Work at the Centre is now exclusively focused on projects that uphold the principles of non-violence, equality, social responsibility and the healing of racial prejudice. Our projects all address the peace values which the Centre embodies.
A huge thanks to funders and supporters for making our development work possible. We appreciate any and every contribution, big or small!
Alternatives to Violence Project
South Africa remains an extremely violent society in which to live. We particularly promote the use of Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) in schools, where violence levels are unacceptably high. One school pupil said of the course impact: “Thank you AVP (for) opening my eyes …. Before I joined AVP, I did not see and feel the violence but now I can detect violence and abuse”.
Individual AVP fora will be set up in Delft and Nyanga to promote peace education in these areas. Such fora will comprise of groups of people who have completed AVP training and who have undertaken to organise AVP committees in their schools and organisations. The aim of the fora will be to maximise the impact of AVP by reaching out to people and communities beyond those who have actually undergone the training themselves.
High school pupils proudly hold up certificates at a graduation ceremony following an Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP)
Diversity
Our work with teachers and pupils at a primary school in Delft continues to have a positive effect on the next generation of leaders in the country. The Xhosa learning project with teachers has now moved into a trilingual learning experience where Xhosa, English and Afrikaans are all incorporated into the workshop.
The primary goal of these workshops is to break down racial barriers between Afrikaans- and Xhosa-speaking teachers and to encourage social integration between the two groups. The programme has been most successful to this end with staff relationships between Coloured and Black teachers now hugely improved. A number of Afrikaans- and Xhosa-speaking teachers have commented on their new appreciation of each other’s culture as well as closer relationships with colleagues across the language divide. One Afrikaans teacher was surprised to find that she shared many similarities with her Xhosa counterpart – the same problems, the same hopes and desires. Another teacher encapsulated the progress of the Diversity programme with the following comment: “… every morning I hear teachers greeting each other in Xhosa and laughing and enjoying while learning from each other. We are learning to understand one another through this.”
We started a nine-week diversity course at a new primary school in Delft and hope to introduce mutual language and culture teaching as part of this intervention too. We at the Centre are very proud of the success of this workshop method.
Athalie Crawford, our Diversity project leader, published an article in Challenge (issue no.86, January 2007) on the above-mentioned diversity project work at schools in Delft. This article on overcoming racial prejudice, entitled 'Prejudice Burns Unseen Until it Comes to the Boil', was also published in Quaker Monthly and Southern Africa Quaker News and New Routes, a periodical of the Life & Peace Institute in Sweden.
Click here to read the full article in Challenge...Athalie Crawford will present a paper at The Seventh International Conference on Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations in Amsterdam during July.
Click here to read more about the diversity conference…
Positive Discipline
We continue our Positive Discipline workshops for teachers at schools and students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Students at the latter institution voted the Positive Discipline module the most useful and practical of all the courses they do in their Professional Studies section!
We made a joint submission to the Standing Committee on Social Development regarding the Children’s Amendment Bill earlier this year calling for a total ban on the use of corporal punishment by parents. This submission was made together with Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (RAPCAN) and the Community Law Centre of the University of the Western Cape. Many role players in the field of children’s rights were present and the submission was very well received. Subsequent to our submissions the National Council of Provinces has included a ban on corporal punishment of children in the Children’s Amendment Bill which will go to the National Assembly for approval before it can be signed into law by the President.
Our Positive Discipline project leader, Avril Knott-Craig, delivered a paper at the International Conference on Learner Discipline at North-West University. Entitled 'Positive About Discipline – A system that can work in South African schools', the paper outlines various causes of violent and disruptive learner behaviour at South African schools and proposes a system of non-violent discipline as an alternative to corporal punishment. There was only one other presentation that offered a system for the solution of learner behaviour in South African schools. We are most proud that QPC and the Positive Discipline project received such a positive response.
Click here to read full conference paper…
Youth at Risk
The goal of our Youth at Risk project is to direct young people away from participation in violent and criminal activities. Workshops and outings are structured to provide opportunities for them to reflect on their lives and to explore ways of overcoming hurdles.
Workshops continue at a fast pace with twenty-four youths at a time in Delft. The current theme of this project is ‘From Scars to Stars’. Living in communities where gangsterism, poverty, unemployment, violence and drug abuse are widespread, the brutal reality of these young people’s lives is such that many of them bring high levels of anger and frustration to the workshops. Our challenge is to harness this anger and help youth to direct their energy into positive pursuits. We help them to interrogate the negative influences in their communities and homes and to focus on their futures. In one of the most recent Youth at Risk workshops, this method took the form of the children writing letters to the people in their lives who they need to forgive for harming them. These young people wrote and sent letters to those people (most were adults) who had harmed them in some way and, through this exercise, they empowered themselves by choosing to forgive their wrongdoers.
'We can do anything! Because we can!' A poster made by primary school pupils during a Youth at Risk project workshop in Delft
Young Women's Forum
The Young Women’s Forum is a new project which is currently being set up at two high schools in the Delft area. The 22 pupils from each school are aged between 15 and 18 and were selected for the project as teachers felt they displayed the requisite leadership qualities.
The Young Women’s Forum workshops encourage young women to build confidence in themselves through the mutual sharing of knowledge and experience. In many environments in South Africa, young women have not had much opportunity to voice their opinions. Particularly in traditional communities, it is often the older people who make decisions for young women. This project facilitates dialogue between young women and provides a platform on which issues can be raised and lobbied.
A central aim of the project is to build the self-esteem of these young women and to empower them to take responsibility for their life choices. Drawn from economically and socially disadvantaged communities, we feel such women are particularly vulnerable to violence, abuse and HIV/Aids. The project raises awareness on issues affecting young women and workshops focus particularly on HIV/Aids, sexuality, violence against women and the socialisation of women.
The Forum also provides young women with opportunities to network and to form qualitative partnerships with other organisations. To this end, we are working with the Women’s and Gender Studies Programme at the University of the Western Cape. Workshops with postgraduate students and school pupils will start in July 2007.
Other Activities
Moral Regeneration Movement Conference
A number of QPC staffers attended a Moral Regeneration Movement conference organised by the South African National Defence Force. The presentations and discussions broadened our understanding of why South Africa is such a violent society and what various faiths can contribute to the building of a peaceful society today.
Quaker Peace Network Africa Consultation
Nokuthula Mbete, our project leader of the Young Women’s Forum, participated in the Quaker Peace Network (QPN) Africa consultation at Kibuye in Rwanda earlier this year. The mission statement of QPN is: to improve the effectiveness of Friends’ organisations to prevent violent conflicts in Africa by working on all levels, from the community base to international level. This consultation was the largest ever, with 50 participants drawn from different countries in Africa and around the world. Nokuthula facilitated an interest group session on the topic ‘The Role of Young Women in Peace-building’.
Give now
You may use your credit card to give to the work of the Quaker Peace Centre. Go to www.cafonline.org and type Cape Town Quaker into the search field 'Keyword(s) or phrase' under 'Find a charity and donate' which will bring you to the Cape Town Quaker Peace Centre Committee.
More about the Quaker Peace Centre
Please visit our website www.quaker.org/capetown
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Please e-mail Martin Struthmann at martin@qpc.org.za if you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter.
