Hands On Archives - Together We Thrive

Restorative Circles

Restorative Circles: Community Empowered to Walk Toward Their Conflicts

At 6 A.M. Anton awakens with a start, hearing his six-year-old son crying out in fear. Looking into the street, Anton sees twelve tanks rumbling past their apartment building. The unpredictable appearance of tanks is just one of the challenges living 15 kilometers from a war zone. Unidentified, heavily armed masked gunmen patrol the streets, their vicious-looking dogs snarling at their feet. The regional water system has been destroyed, leaving only one open-pit well to supply the entire town. This is life for civilians along the war-front in eastern Ukraine as the conflict drags on.

Fura-da-nono: Dialogue Between Farmers and Herders

What happens when farmers and herders clash over use of shared land? My Nigerian colleagues and I facilitated a dialogue between these two groups from Bole and surrounding communities (in Adamawa State) from September 28 to September 30, 2017.

From Fear to Understanding

Novohrodivka Dialogue

The small town of Novohrodivka, 15 km from the warfront (ATO) had been experiencing conflict between the local Russian-speaking residents of the town and the Ukrainian army stationed there.

We were invited to support dialogue between these two groups. Anton, a colleague who was a participant in the dialogue facilitation training arranged by Foundations for Freedom, had made connections both with the leaders from a local town and with the commander of the army brigade. He met with each of them separately and they each agreed that they would like support to have a dialogue to try to reframe their relationship.