By Sierra James | Program Manager & Co-Founder of Ba Futuru
Since its founding in 2004, NGO Ba Futuru has provided life-enhancing programming to more than 25,000 children, women, youth, community leaders, police and other key actors in the areas of peace building, gender empowerment, child protection and conflict transformation.
Check out Ba Futuru's recent article in the Guardian about the impact of our work: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/15/timor-leste-gangs-confront-past
Ba Futuru has made significant progress in stopping violence against women and children through empowering people across Timor-Leste with conflict mitigation skills, positive discipline strategies, protection information and human rights awareness. In a country where many people do not yet realize that there are negative impacts of physical punishment, providing parents, teachers and community leaders with information about the negative impacts of physical punishment and helping them to build positive discipline skills, is instrumental to stopping the cycle of violence and helping children lead happier and healthier lives.
The first and second stage of Ba Futuru’s Strengthening Peace in the Lives of Children: Stopping the Violence project ran between 2011 and 2012 with generous funding support from individuals via Global Giving and the East Timor Justice Sector Support Facility. The project was implemented in three senior high school in Timor-Leste: Nicolau Lobato School in Tasi Tolu, 10 de Dezembru School in Comoro, Dili, and 99 Atauro School in Atauro.
This project provided skill building for individuals who impact the lives of children, to help them ensure children’s access to justice and protection from abuse and neglect. In addition, this project worked directly with students in a participatory process of creating positive discipline models together with their teachers and parents, in order to stop the use of violence in the classroom. After holding intensive training workshops, Ba Futuru brought together students, teachers and parents twice a month to discuss, share and develop good strategies for positive discipline and classroom management. This project also developed the capacity, knowledge and skills of students in the areas of positive discipline, access to justice, human rights, conflict resolution, peer mediation and civic education.
In addition, stage 2 of this project resulted in an educational film and lessons learned manual (below), which were created together with Timorese teachers, school directors and students from these schools. Stage three of the project began in May of 2012 and will go until December of 2012. During this period Ba Futuru will require your further support so that the new Lessons Learned publications can be used to provide important positive discipline and child protection training to teachers and teacher trainers which is imperative to stopping the use of violence in classrooms across Timor-Leste.
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