Anna Vogt is the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Advocacy and Context Analyst.
As we boarded the bus, José David Valencia handed us all “gestores de paz” buttons to pin to our shirts. We were on our way to the La Milagrosa school, located at the outskirts of Agua Blanca, a marginalized neighborhood in the city of Cali. As we arrived, students in uniform, pinned with the exact same button, led us into a classroom down a hallway.
Anna Vogt.
Every year, MCC LACA bring together partners from around the region for an encounter around a specific theme. This year, we met in Colombia, to talk about education, and to visit an MCC partner, Edupaz, supported school. As always, the gathered practitioners are the experts. Participants work in education in a variety of ways, ranging from daily tutoring of children whose parents are imprisoned in Bolivia to advocacy for better access to education in Honduras. Whatever their specific focus, one aspect is clearly shared: a desire that the region’s children and youth can access all the tools they need for well-being. Our conversation in La Milagrosa reflects and reinforces that passion.
The desks were too small, but we crammed into them anyways as the students began to tell us about their roles as peace mediators. As the conversation progressed, the initially quiet students were soon bubbly and articulate, interrupting each other to tell us about their involvement in the peace mediation program.
Anna Vogt.
“Now people approach us and ask for help with their conflicts,” one student shared. Through training provided from Edupaz, the students learn conflict resolutions skills and apply them in their classrooms. The pin identifies them as peacebuilders in the school. Not only do their classmates ask for assistance when they see the button, it also creates accountability. In the words of another student:
“I know that as soon as I put on my button, I’m responsible to my peers.”
The goal of the peace mediators program is not ultimately about individual transformation, although each of the students we met has a story of change due to their involvement in the mediation trainings. Rather, the program seeks structural change within schools and neighbourhoods, thanks to an interplay between organizations, administrators, teachers, local authorities, and student. Individual transformation reflect and lead back to larger changes in a mutually reinforcing cycle.
Liliana Blandon Huertas, an administrator in La Milagrosa. Anna Vogt.
When a school administration is committed to implementing the program, discipline policies in the school change and begin to move from punitive to restorative. Classrooms together come up with “pactos de conviencia” or agreements on how to relate to each other. Students mediators gain the tools to interact well with teachers and their peers if they violate the new norms. As classroom interactions change, new patterns of behavior spread in families and spill over into neighbourhoods.
Students don’t just learn how to formally sit down and mediate a conflict between two disputing parties. They also form the everyday habits of peacemaking and dialogue that can assist in a variety of different conflict situations, such as active listening, respectful communication, rights of the child, and the knowledge that they can make a difference. Yersenida, an articulate eight-year-old, shares about mediating conflicts between her friends outside of school hour, and learning to understand root causes of tensions.
Anna Vogt.
As their peers invite the mediators to deal with local conflicts, the young people end up with a deep, localized knowledge of Agua Blanca. This practical knowledge helps to reveal structural issues and points of tension, knowledge that can be used to seek solutions and lasting change through forming positive relationships with local authorities, often bridged through school administrators.
“We’ve answered all your questions. Can we ask you questions now? This one is specifically for our visitors from the United States.” A fourteen-year-old young woman asks us during a pause in the conversation. “What would you do if an armed student walked into your classroom? We watch the news and we know about the weapons and the massacres taking place.”
The US citizens in our group struggle to answer, through tears. It is only a month after the Parkland school shooting, and there don’t seem to be very many clear answers.
Perhaps the young people sitting in front of us in the classroom, and around the Americas are the best answer. Children are not only the future. They are also the present. [A month later, massive student lead marches take place across the United States. This is further proof.]
Anna Vogt.
Yet, just like in Agua Blanca, individual transformation alone is not enough. Systemic change requires the work and interaction of everyone involved, kids to adults.
“One human helping another human.” Juan David sums up the peer- mediation program as we leave the school. As partners return home, this is also the message they carry and continue in their diverse contexts and organizations. Change is possible, and the region’s young people can lead the way.
Anna Vogt.