Great Lakes Bridges – Insights from the Great Lakes region of Africa

Please join us in welcoming Yolanda Weima, a new featured blogger with PeaceQuest in Kingston. She will be presenting us with insight into her peace work as a graduate student splitting her time between Canada and Burundi. We are excited to be sharing her words with you!

Around the world, peace makers reflect on what peace is—similarly to PeaceQuest’s white square project. In this video, the Quaker organisation American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) asked people involved in the work of their partner organisations in Burundi what peace means to them:

Located in the Great Lakes region of Africa, Burundi has experienced genocidal violence and civil war in recent decades, causing hundreds of thousands to flee the country. Many of those featured in the video are people who have returned to their country, but face many challenges in trying to regain their livelihoods. Others are practitioners, working with peace building organisations. What do they say that is similar to what people have said in PeaceQuest’s white square project? Are there things that those featured in the video mention that have not before been part of your understanding of peace?

While this video is set in a very different context to that of PeaceQuest’s focus, it draws attention to how different understandings and experiences of peace influence how we think of peace.

What experiences and stories have influenced your understandings of peace? What are the cultural and ideological assumptions that shape how you think about peace? Does hearing perceptions of peace from people who have lived through very different experiences change how you think about peace in your own life? In your city or region? In your country? In the world?