Creators of Peace Circles in Mau Narok, Nakuru County, Kenya
The Peace Circle provided a safe space for participants to engage in story-sharing and reflection, leading to significant realizations and commitments towards inner peace as well as outer peace.

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Creators of Peace Circle at Olivienhoutbosch Development Association (ODA), South Africa 
Facilitator Gladys Mabe, said, “This Peace Circle made me realise the depth of pain I have experienced while I was growing up - I needed my father’s love and care so much . I also experienced rape by my cousin while nobody else was home. I’m grateful that this has come into to my awareness as I continue my inner healing journey.”

Family Trustbuilding Dialogue
The Family Trustbuilding Programme (TBP) dialogue is the second follow-up, following onto the Creators of Peace Circle (PC) where previous PC participants are encouraged to bring a family member. This is done in partnership with Ukulunga Foundation, Initiatives of Change and Olievenhoutbosch Development Association.

As Initiative of Change through its two programmes, Creators of Peace and Family Trustbuilding Programme is blazing a trail alongside the Ukulunga foundation. This new space of collaboration is now looking at the holistic development of participants with inner healing, family care as well as sustainability. Ukulunga foundation, is a registered NPO that thrives on development and changing lives around Pretoria. August 15th to 17th 2022, we started with the first of four CoP circles under the renewed partnership.  This project will run until November 30th, 2022. 

On the 9th of July 2022, the IofC Trustbuilding team delivered a dialogue on the theme ‘Fathers Matter’ to the community of Orange Farm at Orange farm Human Rights Advice Centre.  The aim of the event was to honour and appreciate fathers and the men they are before becoming fathers.  Eight men attended the session coming from Orange Farm, Soweto and Midrand communities.

After welcoming, introduction and setting ground rules, we started with the ‘Communication’ session that was led by Cleo.  It focused on Communication as an expression tool. Cleo said that it is not that men cannot communicate.  However, it is the struggle of not expressing and knowing how to communicate better.  We looked at the five languages of love, Concepts from the book by Gary Chapman. He notes the five as words of affirmation, acts of love, receiving gifts, quality time and physical touch. This is to enable an understanding of different ways of communication and how to understand one's own language and that of those around one.

the launch was a theatrical performance narrating the violence the country faced between 1962 and 2015. The play showed the continued blame between the people, showing the performers in a boat on their way to land. On their way to the land, they started accusing themselves of murder (executioners vs victims) until one of them stood up and spoke, 'If this boat sinks, we will all drown. Let us stand together and build our own country.' At the play’s end, they sang a song called: Twarahemukiye ba sokuru (We betrayed our ancestors). 'We are no longer human beings. We are ashamed. We have betrayed our ancestors. We have killed each other. We have sinned against the God of heaven. We have shed blood, and we should have had mercy on them. As God did for us.'

on the 30th June, Creators of Peace (CoP) delivered a Peace Circle (PC) 'teaser' to the six stakeholders of Orange Farm community with the aim to build new community intervention through Orange Farm Human Rights centre and for better understanding of our programmes.  Due to some unexpected demands on the time of the stakeholders we were not able to have a full three-day PC.  These stakeholders will continue as partners with us in future and they wanted to experience a PC themselves first.

The 10 people who took part are working with the Clinic, Home Based Care and Orphanage centre and the Women’s Forum, as Human Rights activists and community activists - all trying to address directly or indirectly issues of mental health, gender based violence (GBV) and community development.  It was a mixed gender group ranged between 23-68 years of age.  These community workers are emotionally broken and need to heal from trauma.

In May Creators of Peace (CoP) in Khayelitsha, Cape Town hosted a Peace Circle (PC) from May 4-6th for 11 participants, both men and women.  These groups are mostly affected by the high gangstarism impact in the city. Cape Town ranks high as a city of gangs and shooting in South Africa especially in informal settlements and low cost housing areas.

One of the participants, Chulumanco said, “I came here for the sake of peace that I am lacking from, at home my wife could not stop talking about the CoP programme. I wanted to experience the impact that I am seeing in her and the peace she encourages. Due to society and everything culture taught me, I believed that as a man I don’t have to open up about matters of the heart.  However, here I am able to.”

On 25th June, the Vlakfontein Men's Forum, near Soweto, welcomed this event for 12 men between the ages of 21 and 65 years.  It was a cold rainy day.  As we drank coffee together with these fathers, grandfathers and hoping-to-be fathers, we had an informal discussion about the generation gap - teenagers feeling they are man enough to tackle life, earn money and fame and don't need guidance from their parents or elders, and the older generation have feelings of despair and hurt by the perceived disrespect of their ways of doing things.