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Care
for one another key point during dicussion
Monday October 28, 2002
Roderick Benns
If one could imagine a peaceful community,
what form might it take?
If one could imagine a peaceful community, what qualities would define it
and what sort of people would outline its neighbourhoods and fill its businesses,
its green space and drive on its roads? And can it flourish with greater
attention?
The need to envision and concretize such questions
was at the core of the workshop put on by Lynn Zimmer and Herb Wiseman's
last Thursday morning workshop on day two of the Peaceful Communities
forum. The forum was held at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Peterborough.
A great number of ideas were thrown out and discussed by the small group
of about 10.
These included people looking out for one another, acceptance and respect
and creating 'Christmas' all year round.
Dave Weddell, presenter of the restorative justice
seminar, says there needs to be a greater collective focus for helping
each other better, not a punitive approach.
Another participant felt that isolated programs did not work - that a
greater, pervasive sense of caring needed to be worked on to achieve success.
Zimmer says one of the key things that she believes
needs to be assimilated is that violence cannot be ignored in discussions.
"We have to develop a greater comfort in discussing violence, not
set about ignoring it," she says, which includes children, too.
Darrin Gaudreau, a participant and correctional
program co-ordinator with The Salvation Army, says that he worries about
the situations in homes with respect to children.
"The economic situations, the poverty that exists…if we can
reach out to families we can make a significant difference," he says.
In response to the concern of some parents being absent from debates on
achieving peaceful communities, Zimmer also suggests that "what if
we taught kids how to be better parents?"
This was obviously in reference to getting to children early, thereby
creating tomorrow's adults who would be more inclined to be peaceful-minded.
Cyndi Langford, a vice principal from Port Hope
High School, says that more leadership is needed at the provincial level
in establishing more focused programming.
"I don't see a centralized body to help. Peer remediation is great,
but where is our approach to the larger issue?" she asks.
Langford says British Columbia is farther along in that regard, with more
resources to draw upon.
Herb Wiseman sums up a point that was made earlier in the seminar -- that
the community needs to be concerned about how conflict is resolved, not
with the conflict itself, necessarily.
The group believes that one of the key ideas generated out of the discussion
was a community with a vision of caring for one another. They also believe
that fostering a common sense of belonging was integral to the objective
of achieving a peaceful community.
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