Community Conversations
This was an opportunity for the Bishop to meet people from the diaspora who are committed to bridge building work and for them to meet a very well respected Singalese peace worker who is dedicated to national unity and peaceful co-existence in Sri Lanka. The meeting therefore included people from two sides of a horrific conflict and oppression of the Tamil people. Everyone in the meeting recognised that Tamil people cannot speak out in Sri Lanka so they were the ones who had to speak. The diaspora were pleased that the church was speaking out but wanted it to have a stronger voice. The Bishop said that the Christian vocabulary doesn’t work and he needs to use Buddhist vocabulary and concepts to speak to Singalese. The diaspora here felt that their role can be in giving resources of time, money, contacts and particularly to help make connections and networks that would be useful, such as linking up schools here with schools in Sri Lanka. Jayabalam, as a journalist, and everyone else too, felt that there needed to be positive stories in the press of the role and contribution of the Tamil diaspora and of the examples of peace building that are taking place within the country, such as the work of the Bishop. |
|||
We were delighted to host a meeting on Wednesday 4th August for our local Tamil friends and contacts to meet an important peace worker from Sri Lanka– Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe. The meeting was set up by Noeline Sanders who is attached to St Ethelburgas Peace and Reconciliation Centre.
|
|||
Conflict & Change was invited by Bibi, learning mentor to run a community conversation in Tuesday Parents Group in Hartley School in East Ham.
Manor Park residents recently gathered to meet their neighbours and to put their heads together to think about the upcoming community forum summer event. The Council invited us to run the whole evening Conflict-and-Change-style and so it was a meeting with a difference for the 22 people who turned up on the night! On top of this were 8 Community Conversation facilitators and 3 council officers. Along with activities that got people running to find another seat, speaking to strangers about their interests and favourite holiday destinations they also spent time in small groups sharing their experiences of community spirit. In the Getting-To-Know-You Community Conversations we use a positive question about people’s past community experiences to help build relationships and a feeling of community spirit within the group.
|
|||
 Our Children and Young People’s team have recently run valuing diversity sessions with the year 4 classes and Louisa James, learning mentor and family worker, invited us to run a community conversation in her Thursday parent group. The aim of this was to help with the bridge building between parents. At this meeting there were 11 culturally diverse mothers from four different religions.Tallat (Muslim Mediation Service) and Ros (Community Conversations) got the parents thinking together about some questions. Everyone joined in and spoke from the heart - something we pretty much guarantee in Community Conversations! They all also joined in the various games led by Louisa, many of which the children also play as part of the valuing diversity sessions: sun shines on, zip/zap/zop and name-and-action. Firstly parents shared great parenting moments, a deliberately positive question. As always, parents were given a few minutes to respond to the question in pairs before they spoke in turn in the whole group. For some parents, this was their first experience of speaking out in a group like this. It was interesting that two parents shared their success at giving boundaries to their children after having attended the ‘Triple P’ parenting course and two others were proud that they had given their children a little bit of freedom to do something on their own although they were very nervous about it. |
|||
