By Adriana Cârnu
Summary: This article brings the reader a harvested basket of reflections coming from speakers and participants at an online gathering around the topic of “belonging.” The second annual Peacebuilder Exchange: Belonging Festival was organized by Bosch Alumni Network’s Peace Cluster and iac Berlin in November 2022.
The importance of belonging has been rekindled by all the societal fallacies that the pandemic brought to light. Systemically speaking: everyone, everywhere needed to feel belongingness and aliveness in the networks they were a part of, while we each were socially isolating in our own corners of the world. The meaning of community and belonging were hot themes that became interwoven across many contexts over the past three years, from the local market to professional hubs. Belonging is the blood of every organism, the glue that keeps everything together. Given the chance, members of all communities were being called to togetherness and support of one another.
The Peacebuilder Exchange is an annual event organized by members of Bosch Alumni Network, made up of former fellows of the Robert Bosch Stiftung programs. The Peace Cluster in particular is a group of participants within the network, who have backgrounds in and commitments to peacebuilding. The second annual online gathering took place between November 29 and December 1, 2022, and brought together three days of speakers who combined their approaches of peace with commitments to fostering community. Therefore, the theme of the festival was a gift that had been brought alive by the members of the Peace Cluster in our monthly meetings: “belonging.” The intention of this online event was to contribute to the restoration of the sense of belonging in the cluster and to connect members to a deeper systemic exploration, during three days of infusion in peace practices, wisdom, and stories.
In 2022, the organizing team joined energy and intention with the Documenting Peace project, through which this column is being published. By collaborating together, the Peacebuilder Exchange added a series of virtual capacity building workshops on topics ranging from teaching peace education to mobilizing international human rights standards, as well as implementing trauma-sensitive approaches to peace and documenting war crimes. You can watch the videos from the Documenting Peace workshop series here.
My reflections in this article will focus on the main sessions of the Peacebuilder Exchange, offering a roadmap for following the work of the impressive peacebuilders who contributed to our online program.
Day 1: November 29, 2022
The event started with a session entitled “Remembering Ourselves Home,” which was delivered by Toko-Pa Turner, a Canadian writer, teacher, and dreamworker. As Toko-pa authored the award-winning book Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, we also touched upon the theme of reconnecting with belonging within ourselves and our communities. “There is really only one way to restore a world that is dying and in disrepair: to make beauty where ugliness has set in,” Toko-Pa said in answer to one of the questions from the participants.
The next session—called “Building Bridges Over Turbulent Waters: Peacebuilding During Times of Crisis”—was delivered by Jaco Roets, who focused on finding common values as a way to build bridges between groups. In opening his session, Jaco shared the sentiment that “peacebuilding is not about the absence of conflict, but it is how we work through conflict and challenges toward common ground. That is the foundation for collective learning, reflection, compromise, and action.”
Day 2: November 30, 2022
In the beginning of the second day of the Peacebuilder Exchange, John Mugabi Socrates’ session, called “Peace Building through Ekyooto,” focused on integrating Indigenous knowledge into peacebuilding on the community level. “Ekyooto is [when] people of different cultures embrace dialogue around [a] burning fire that provides warmth to everyone irrespective of the differences. Ekyooto is focusing on Indigenous knowledge and methods to build bridges of peace among different [people] who are [in] a fight in the community,” John said while detailing the spirit of Ekyooto.
Two impactful conversations on the second day were organized by Juan delGado and Wabwire Joseph Ian. Juan presented online platforms as tools for authentic collaboration in the ICH (Intangible Cultural Heritage) of displaced people. He described the cultural heritage preservation methods they are using and challenges they are navigating at Qisetna, where he works to create a trustful relationship amongst young Syrians affected by conflict and displacement. Ian, whose reflections you can read through this Documenting Peace column, focused on the connection between peacebuilding and community arts, drawing from case studies in East Africa.
Day 3: December 1, 2022
On the final day of the Peacebuilder Exchange, Friederike Bubenzer brought reflections on the importance of integrating MHPSS (Mental Health and Psychosocial Support) with peacebuilding into our space. Her session discussed the background and concepts behind MHPSS, which focuses on how violent conflict affects the mental health of individuals and communities in post-conflict societies. Friederike also discussed what integration between MHPSS and peacebuilding could look like, and how to do it using co-creation methodologies and the United Nations Development Progremme (UNDP) guidance note.
Anton Goodman shared what he learned from leading a national campaign against extremism in Israel, and the role that belonging has in both the problem and the solution. Speaking from the perspective of his involvement in a three-year peacebuilding campaign centered on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Anton shared lessons from his experiences on the ground, as well as in working with the media and decision makers. Further insight into Anton’s work can be found in the Documenting Peace column series here.
Later in the evening, a presentation by social entrepreneur Natalia Bialobrzewska deepened our exploration of the connections between the topics of belonging and peacebuilding. Natalia powerfully reflected on the connection between these two concepts, and how the sense of belonging affects everyday life and peacebuilding activities. In response to a decrease in social connectedness and the growth of extremisms during the pandemic, she founded Kontakt Kollektiv: a movement that creates safe spaces for meaningful human connections. Her presentation was built on insights from her journey of igniting the collective.
Conclusion
One of the wisdom nudges of the event that stuck with me came from the mouth of Toko-Pa Turner, who at a certain point in her talk invited everyone to contemplate “showing up for each other.” Just showing up as we are, for how long we can, might be the right ingredient to keep the fire alive in our teams, communities, or networks.
About the Author
In terms of intention, Adriana Cârnu’s main community mantra is that the well-being of the community is co-created in an open and safe space with the deeper systemic change at the heart of the process. That is why her passions revolve around process designing, hosting, and harvesting group transformation. Adriana currently serves as the moderator of the Bosch Alumni Network’s Peace Cluster.