A month on the road with Restorative Circles (1)
I am back home after several intense weeks on the road. Here are a series of brief updates on what's been happening over the last 5 weeks. The brevity of what's below, and the things left out for now, is not an indication of how significant this time has been. If anything, it shows how full life has been for Martina, Becky, Gail and I... I feel such gratitude for all that's occurred.
Maranhão
In October the first Facilitator Practice modules took place in Maranhão, in the North of Brazil. One of the financially poorest states in the country Maranhão has a rich local culture and local and international groups are taking significant steps to create social networks of support where violence and vengeance have become the norm. Terre des Hommes are sponsoring the first RC projects, bringing together the criminal and youth justice systems, local community leaders and schools to create new possibilities for conscious peace making.
This was also the first RC Facilitator Practice in Portuguese to be professionally filmed, allowing us to start work on producing training materials that will later be accessible online or on video. The willingness of all those who partner with us by donating financially made this filming possible. Please email us at contact@restorativecircles.org if you'd like to co-create the conditions for editing and distributing this vital material.
My memories of Maranhão - together with the taste of Bacuri and Jussara, the bright blue church, huge tides and chameleons - are summed up by the persistent humanness of those community members and police with whom I connected, at ever deeper levels of shared values, as each day passed...
...by hearing how the relatives of victims wait outside the state's only youth prison, so they can exact revenge when teenage inmates are released...
...and by the words Cleide shared: "Where I live, the police and the priests don't come. When there's conflict, what can we do? This work will be really useful".
