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Author(s): Alba Luz Arrieta Cabrales
"Let`s work on our inner capacity to build peace by transforming violence to non-violence, building community, cooperating in common well-being, communicating assertively and respecting each other ideas and thoughts. Doing that in your daily life you will be a model of building peace, a teacher of peace through your actions by promoting Human Rights, by trusting and caring yourself and others around you"
From the author:
This is based on the Alternatives to Violence Program, a Quaker project I have been sharing in Colombia for 12 years. It is based on Paul Freire and his methodology of "nobody teaches nobody, we all learn together" and "we learn by doing". During the workshops participants can feel that there is something wrong in the way they solve conflicts, how they communicate to other people, how they ask for respect, how they listen to people, how they do violence and harm people and finally decide to transform their acts, words, attitudes, ways to face conflicts.
It is relevant because it works as soon as people involve personally and as a community of participants in the workshop, sharing experiences and processing exercises that lead to discovering their capacities to build peace and avoid violence in an active way.
This quote is based on experiences in jails in the US and recently during workshops with displaced people as a consequence of the past armed conflict in Colombia.
In my opinion, it is of relevant to peace educators because it is something that participants can experience in groups, it is not just theory, it is about deciding for a new life style where nonviolence is cultivated from their inner.