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A letter from a Peaceworker

Tuesday 3rd January 2012

Read about out how Lizzie Ogle, UK Peaceworker, found her first 3 months working at Leap.

Dear Friends,

It is a pleasure to write my first journal letter as a UK Peaceworker to you, roughly three months into my year-long placement at Leap Confronting Conflict. Never has it been a more interesting and appropriate time to join a youth and conflict organisation! Following the events of August 2011, where thousands of young people took to the streets in shocking displays of violence and disengagement, the issues that Leap have been tackling for 25 years were thrown into sharp relief. The imperative to work together to deal with the conflicts that face young people in the UK is keener than ever, as is the need to develop complex solutions to increasingly multifaceted problems.

Leap Confronting Conflict works to the (enormous) brief of youth and conflict. This involves working directly with young people by running workshops and courses in a variety of settings, including schools, Pupil Referral Units, prisons and community organisations. It also involves delivering training for professionals in the youth sector, as well as for various others who are interested in developing their skills in situations of conflict. This multi-dimensional approach is key to developing a shared methodology and language for young people and adults to use together when managing conflict constructively, and preventing violence.

I am working as Programmes and Partners Coordinator for Leap, which means that throughout the course of the year I will be involved in a number of projects, each of which will provide an insight into the diverse potentialities of this work. The project that I have been coordinating since the beginning of my placement is called Preventing Racist Violence, a Peer Education project based primarily in the London borough of Bexley. Bexley has a history of racially motivated crime, and high levels of economic and demographic change have resulted in increasing inter-ethnic tension. This is reflected in the historic strong support for right wing extremist organisations like the BNP and EDL, and exacerbated by public spending cuts which have led to the closure of the Bexley Council for Equality and Diversity (BCED), amongst other services promoting community cohesion.

Funded by Trust for London, the premise of Preventing Racist Violence is that a great deal of resources are currently channelled into dealing with racist violence after the fact – once it manifests itself physically in the form of a violent, and often tragic, event. This in turn leads to punitive and costly measures to bring the perpetrators of such violence to justice through court cases and custodial sentencing. According to the Centre for Social Justice, “England and Wales spend 11 times more on locking children up than on preventing their involvement in crime in the first place”. Preventing violence is a much more elusive task, and its effects much less measurable.

However, through my involvement in this project I have seen the impact on young people as enormously valuable, and in some cases transformational. I have arranged Peer Education sessions in which Leap-trained secondary school students have led primary school students in explorations of identity and prejudice, about what our triggers to conflict and anger are and how best to manage them. Methods used in Leap sessions draw inspiration from an array of interactive and theatrical techniques, designed to enable participants to understand and modify their own behaviour in situations of conflict. To see young people develop the confidence and the sensitivity to facilitate sessions on such intricate issues is inspirational. It also highlights glaring gaps in current formal education – it is rare to see young people given genuine responsibility for the learning and development of others. The positive transformation that this role-reversal can induce is striking. Increased self-esteem and a sense of personal fulfilment were clear to see in the reactions of participants after the completion of each Peer Education session, as well as a kind of bafflement at the extent of their own capabilities. The implications of this work then, lie not only in preventing violence, but also in transforming social landscapes by endowing young people with the experiential knowledge that they can have a real impact within their communities. It is a crucial exercise in extricating young people from the assumption that they are the problem, and giving them space and opportunity to be the solution.

Over the next few months I will be getting involved in a project in Oxford which takes a restorative approach to young victims and perpetrators of crime, finding ways for them to communicate with each other, and constructively manage their own behaviours and feelings. This will lead (hopefully) to their development as Peer Educators, equipped with the skills enabling them to become sources of learning and inspiration for other young people. I will also be conducting a piece of large-scale research regarding the current conflicts and challenges for young people in London, and potential avenues for Leap to take in forging new partnerships and expanding delivery.

Underpinning Leap’s work is the notion that conflict is inevitable in the lives of young people, but that its escalation into violence is not. Rather than being seen as intrinsically negative, conflict is radically reconfigured as a space of encounter which has the capacity to be as creative and transformative as it can be destructive. Running through the workshops that I have attended is a feeling of simultaneous ‘opening out’ and ‘flattening down’. A ‘flattening down’, I think, of the hierarchies of power that exist to tell young people how to think and behave, and to punish when there is perceived wrongdoing. Leap’s methodologies, in contrast, feel empowering and democratic, enabling young people to take responsibility for the choices that they make. An ‘opening out’ of the scope and potential of dialogue about challenging issues. In Bexley, for instance, rather than sweep prejudice under the carpet or adopt a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards racist attitudes, the cultivation of ‘dangerous conversations in safe spaces’ permeates the learning that I have witnessed. The hope is that through rigorous, open-hearted and honest exploration, conflict and prejudice can be transformed and violence prevented. From what I have seen, this hope seems to me well-founded.

I’ll look forward to keeping you updated! Many, many thanks to all who have contributed to the Peaceworker programme.

In Friendship,

Lizzie