Chantelle Garber works and lives in Cali, Colombia, serving with MCC partner Edupaz.
The realities that students live and face in their communities and at home often carry over to their experiences at school, affecting their grades, their ability to engage within class, and also their relationships with peers and teachers. Frequently, this impact is more negative than not, causing conflict and interpersonal violence at school – a fact which the EDUPAZ Foundation for Peace Education, a partner organization of MCC based in Cali, Colombia, is trying to change.
“To develop a greater commitment to peace education in schools by transforming disciplinary models to be more restorative, and to integrate peer mediation into school policy,” is the objective of Edupaz´s peer mediation program. The program began in 2001 in the Mennonite Brethren School, Americas Unidas, as a response to a period of intense conflict in Cali– kidnappings, extortion, and gang violence – all of which were affecting the lives of the students. Since then, EDUPAZ´s peer mediation program has worked with various schools in vulnerable communities in an effort to transform the climate of the classroom, seeking to establish better student-teacher relationships, enhance response to interpersonal conflict, and utilize more restorative forms of discipline.
Photo: Edupaz.
Currently, EDUPAZ works with 2 schools, El Liceo Semillas de Mañana, located just under an hour outside of Cali in the mountains and Colegio Mixto Payan, a school in the outskirts of Cali. “These institutions are located in sectors heavily affected by violence”, says Sara Ospina, co-facilitator of the peer mediation program “[violence] not necessarily from the guerrilla groups, but rather, manslaughter, murder, drug addiction, gangs, invisible borders (gang-controlled neighborhoods) …this really affects the institution, because even though not all are living these things directly, although many are, this affects the relationships within the school.”
The peer mediation workshops take place over two years’ time, with an additional 6 months of follow up. The program meets each month with the school to conduct its workshops: first with a group of teacher-elected students (2 or 3 from each classroom) to serve as peer mediators, another with teachers from the school, and again with parents of students involved in the program. The topics range from communication and active listening, to human dignity, all of which mediators and teachers later replicate to share the same information with their peers in their classrooms.
¨The students in Payan have been especially receptive to the material in a way that has been incredible,¨ says Ospina. Now, when a teacher needs to leave the classroom, the students no longer take advantage of their absence to goof off. Rather, a student will suggest an activity to keep the class occupied and focused until the teacher gets back.
Ospina goes on to tell about one student in particular from 10th grade with strong leadership skills in the classroom, but who did not use their leadership in a positive way – “everyone would do what he would say…and this was negatively affecting the classroom´s behavior… he was like the boss of the classroom… he would say talk and everyone would begin to talk, or be quiet and everyone would be quiet”.
Upon hearing about this student, Luz Stella, the facilitator of the mediation program, went to the student to talk with him and invited him to be a part of the program, as a mediator. The student agreed to participate, and slowly but surely his behavior in the classroom began to change. Today, he continues to be a leader in his classroom but now in a more positive way.
Edupaz strives to create these changes in schools by sparking discussion and providing tools that empower students and teachers to be actors for peace in the midst of the tough contexts where they live. Students realize that while they may not have control over every circumstance and the problems the face in their communities, they do have the power over the way they react to conflict, treat others, and their behavior in school.
Photo: Edupaz.