Help 450 Rwandan Prisoners to Become Peacebuilders

In Rwanda, the Covid-19 restriction measures have been lowered, but prisons still have restrictions, especially for the implementation of projects.

During this reporting, two main activities were carried out:

1. Meeting with the facilitators: For this meeting, 13 facilitators (8 men and 5 women) participated. Here are the findings of the meeting:

a)       Experiences shared and lessons learned recorded

b)      After the assessment of the context of domestic violence and conflicts that the community is suffering from, the facilitators agreed to start working with the faith leaders until the Government allows project implementation in prisons

c)       Participants agreed to bring more released inmates on board to integrate them into community mediation activities

2. A mediation workshop for faith leaders of local churches in the Eastern Province of Rwanda: It brought together 25 faith leaders (10 men and 15 women) with the aim of equipping them with basic skills to manage conflicts in their communities. After seeing the influence and trust the community has in the faith leaders, and after seeing the domestic violence and conflict the community goes through, we decided to train them so that they can support the mediation of community members and play a vital role in mitigating domestic violence. 

STORIES:

Diogene:

"I'm really grateful for this opportunity, I used to mediate people, but I want to confess because I used to be a judge with bias and partiality. As now, we have a rang of skills in mediation and communication, I think we will help a lot of people to solve their conflict in a professional way"

Elizabeth:

“I just want to take this time to thank the person who thought of this wonderful initiative, we really needed these kinds of skills because we are in the midst of people in conflict who need mediation. I would like to recommend this workshop to all faith leaders as it is very important to us.