A community reconciliation event in the Solomon Islands.
By Nadia Mahmood, Rotary Peace Fellow, University of Queensland, Australia
Over the past two and a half months, I have been working with Prison Fellowship Solomon Islands (PF), a grassroots peace-building organization which runs conflict resolution, restorative justice,and reconciliation programs and provides support for families of inmates.
It is honestly hard to put into words how inspiring and engaging it is to work with this team of local volunteers who exemplify everything that Rotary stands for. During my time here, I have had the opportunity to travel to different provinces to be part of restorative justice training in the prisons and help inmates write letters of apology to their victims.
Rotary Peace Fellow Nadia Mahmood (front center) during her applied field experience.
The Prison Fellowship team delivers the letters to the victims’ families and mediates and counsels them to see if they are open to engaging in reconciliation. As part of this, I have been able to support the team in mediating reconciliations between individuals, communities, as well as between groups of former combatants and between ex-combatants and their own communities.
We organized a Christmas program at three locations that allowed incarcerated parents to reconnect with their families …read more
Source:: Rotary International Blog
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