Manila, Philippines. Greetings of peace and love to you! If I may, I wish to share with you a story with you, in the hope that this will serve as an inspiration and a reminder to us of the importance of our role in the URI as peacebuilders and healers in this world that is mired in the darkness of fear, anger, violence, and bloodshed.

Last November 24 (on Thanksgiving Day!), Shakun and I, together with our team of representatives from different faiths, conducted two sessions of 3-hour VISIONS OF PEACE AMONG RELIGIONS (VPAR) workshops for 60 Muslim and Christian high-school students. The VPAR workshop was part of the 2-day Muslim-Christian Youth Conference hosted by the Miriam College Peace Center. Our Peacemakers' Circle CC was one of the organizations invited to facilitate an interfaith peacebuilding workshop for this "twinning project" that aimed to create a safe space, or a meeting ground, for Muslim students from Rajah Mudah High School in Mindanao (the southern region of the Philippines where conflict between Muslim rebels and government troops is raging), and their Christian counterparts from Miriam High School, an exclusive Catholic girl's school in Metro Manila. Outside their youth, these two groups of students were worlds apart in practically everything!

The Catholic girls were from middle-class and well-to-do families. They spoke English well, and many of them lived in comfortable homes and had chauffeur-driven cars. The Muslims came from indigent families, many of whom had known poverty and want, conflict and war for most of their lives. They could hardly speak English, although they could understand the language. I had to speak both in the dialect and in English while conducting the workshop for them!

The 8-minute VPAR slideshow that we presented to the group after the introductions depicted images of war and violence throughout history. Shakun and I were surprised at how strongly the images seemed to impact on the students, especially the ones from Mindanao. There was no narration, only soft background music. But the images that slowly faded in and out of the screen brought tears to the eyes of some Muslim students who shared memories with their Christian counterparts of real experiences of violence and war in their own communities, and in their everyday lives back home in Mindanao. 

Both Muslims and Christians shared their feelings and thoughts on those images in small groups. Familiar questions were asked that made my heart cry inside: Do you know what is happening to us? Why is there so much fighting and killing in our homeland? What can you do to help us? The stories that the Muslim students told in halting English and Tagalog (the native language of the Metro Manilans) were horrifying and truly heartrending. It was all that their Catholic counterparts could do to grimace and bear their pain in silence. Shakun and I decided to modify the program to allow for healing moments to happen. We asked the kids to reflect on their own God-given gifts, talents, and capacities, and to express these creatively on paper. This was to help them realize that they had in them the "power" or inner resources to contribute something good to the world, and be able to make a difference. 

The artwork that they came up with was inspiring. Some had written poems, others wrote prayers, and many drew flowers and trees and pictures of peaceful communities. They offered these as a symbolic gift of themselves to their Muslim or Christian partner. The gift came with a story about the meaning behind their artwork. They wrote their names, their addresses and contact numbers at the back of their "gift" so that they could keep in touch with one another.

The workshops ended with eagerness among the Muslim and Christian students to take photos of each other to remember each other by.

Shakun and I, and our team of interfaith peacemakers, were deeply moved by the experience. I returned home that day with renewed passion for the endeavor of creating cultures of peace, justice, and healing in our midst, and a stronger conviction about the need for a URI presence that is pro-actively responsive to the call of our times in our world.

We can be catalysts of change -- as URI bridgebuilders, peacemakers, healers, and nurturers of relationships among people of diverse cultures and beliefs  -- and help the younger generation of would-be peacemakers and peacebuilders gain confidence in themselves and learn to make a difference wherever they are. There is much that we can do in the URI to help each other make our world a better (and safer!) place for generations of people to come!

Yours truly, 

Marites Africa