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An article from the Agencia Pública de Noticias de Quito

“Dedicated Lives”, a book on non-violence written by authors of the Press Association of Ecuador will be presented at the Casa Carrión this Wednesday, October 25th, at 7:00 p.m.

As part of its journalistic work, the Pressenza team in Ecuador conducted a series of interviews which are published in this book. The objective of this effort is to recover and disseminate the experience of 12 people who in Ecuador have dedicated their lives to a struggle, initiative, or task that contributes to the construction of a non-violent Ecuador. They are twelve testimonies, twelve examples for our future.

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The book will be published under the label of Manthra Editores. The main characters will include: Leonor Bravo and her dream of promoting reading, Nila de Aguiar on the situation of Afro-descendants, María del Carmen Barros on the importance of community building, Pascale Laso and the formation of the group Mujeres de Frente, Luis Montaluisa and Catalina Álvarez for their struggle for the rights of indigenous peoples; emblematic figures of the Ecuadorian Culture of the XX century.

The press agency Pressenza has been operating for 9 years. Its initial motivation was to cover the World March for Peace and Nonviolence. Journalists and photographers from some countries joined in this cause. In 2014, Pressenza was legalized in Ecuador as an International Press Agency, with a focus on Peace and Nonviolence, and for three years it has been a member of APE (Association of Foreign Press in Ecuador). Pressenza has about 250 volunteers in more than 30 countries, specialized in communication, social activism, cultural and academic fields.

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(Click here for the original version in Spanish.)

Journalism in Latin America: Is it turning towards a culture of peace?

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With a universalistic humanistic perspective, Pressenza is a space open to the expression of ordinary people. It works with issues related to humanism, non-violence, human rights, disarmament and discrimination, actively promoting collaboration agreements and alliances with other agencies, as well as links of reciprocity with portals, platforms, information and communication media, specific communities and cultures.

It has a wide network of news media that achieve worldwide dissemination of its local proposals, nourishing its information with the material provided by the agency. It is present in 30 countries and issues its information service daily in English, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Greek. It has columnists, reporters, photographers, graphics, video and translators on five continents, who contribute without profit their professional work, whose basic condition is their autonomy, independence and self-management.

In Ecuador, for 5 years, it has been promoting the Fair of Non-Violent Initiatives and, for 3 years, the October initiative for Peace and Non-Violence, whose activities are carried out jointly with groups, foundations and organizations that carry news about initiatives that promote non-violence and non-discrimination.

“Non-Violent October,” is a project of civil society, formed by a group of individuals and non-profit organizations, with the aim of promoting a humanistic and human rights approach, to motivate a culture of peace, active non-violence and non-discrimination, as life actions to contribute to the integration of individuals and their peoples.

“Non-Violent October,” carries out various activities throughout the year, especially in October, which begins with the International Day of Nonviolence. The work is collaborative and self-managing. It does not receive any kind of investment from a public or private entity, thus promoting the empowerment of individuals for individual and collective transformation.

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An article from NVI Noticias (translated by CPNN)

Mexico City.- The International Encounter of Journalism in the Culture of Peace has prepared a program that includes the participation of women journalists such as Zaina Erhaim of Syria, who received the Peter Mackler Award for Ethical and Courageous Journalism in 2015; Marcela Turati, Nina Lakhani, Patricia Nieto Nieto, Daniela Rea, Yanet Aguilar and Carina Pérez García.

This event will be held as part of the Zócalo International Book Fair on October 10 and 11 at the El Rule Cultural Center. It will review the role of journalism in building a culture of peace.

The journalist from Syria, Zaina Erhaim, will take part in a dialogue with Marcela Turati, moderated by Yanet Aguilar

Tools of art and culture

“Given the situation of violence and insecurity in different regions of the country, the federal government has inserted in its cultural policy the need to take advantage of the tools of art and culture to help repair the damaged social fabric, to recover public spaces abandoned in recent years, and to offer alternative cultural expressions to the society.

Writers such as Jon Lee Anderson, Alma Guillermoprieto, Cristina Pacheco and Leila Guerrero, to mention just a few examples, have been given the task of recovering different artistic and cultural manifestations of our relationship with the environment and journalism in the graphic press, where it is necessary to take into account played by the media, particularly by cultural journalists.

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(Click here for the original article in Spanish.)

Journalism in Latin America: Is it turning towards a culture of peace?

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Culture of Peace

In Colombia, a program called Culture of Peace and Coexistence has been developed, based on the conviction that the expression of the Culture of Peace needs to be established in language, ideals and collective practices. The document of the program states that “Individuals, social groups and all nations recognize that the Culture of Peace is the key to transform individual and collective paradigms from the culture of violence. It must be rooted in daily life, favoring the reconstruction of the social fabric through the practice of new values, attitudes and behaviors.”

According to Jesús Alejo Santiago, the Zócalo encounter establishes working groups to foster dialogue among reporters who have experience in electronic and written media in conversation with civil society, in order to evaluate the tools and strategies they have used to spread social, artistic and cultural activities that promote a culture of peace in the various regions of the country that have experienced violence and insecurity.

Participants

This meeting opens with the dialogue between Zaina Erham and Marcela Turati, entitled “How peace can be promoted through journalism.” Next, will be the roundtable, “How to make peace visible: a task for journalism.” In the midst of accounts of conflict, violence, death and bloodshed, journalism also has the responsibility to collaborate on the road to peace and to tell the stories of people who have remained invisible, giving a human context to the facts, according to the cultural journalist.

Other participants include Patricia Nieto Nieto, Hector de Mauleón and Erik Vargas Torres. In the roundtable “Not only bad news is good news” particpants will include Carina Pérez García and Daniela Rea, with the moderator Baltazar Domínguez. Then, in the closing conference, there will be a dialogue between Alberto Salcedo Ramos and Eduardo Vazquez Martín, entitled “Culture and journalism for peace.”

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An article from the Global Campaign for Peace Education

Colombian society has been immersed in more than 60 years of diverse kinds of violence, which have left deep scars in our culture, in the way we carry ourselves in everyday situations, in our interactions with one another, in how we address conflicts and how we interact with nature. This is reflected in both public and private scenarios. In parallel to these several scenarios of violence, several spaces for resistance, peacebuilding, truth, forgiveness and reconciliation have nonetheless taken hold. Led by women, men, youth, boys and girls, these spaces have strived to keep hope for peace and a collective construction of society alive, even in the context of such pain and tragedy.

What is happening in Colombia, Is peace possible?

In this turn of events, it is imperative to foster dialogue about the demands and the implications of education in regards to the historical moment of the agreements between the government and the FARC-EP; as well as inform about other remaining forms of violence in society, and thus the need to position the Education for a Culture of Peace as a central axis in the implementation of the Agreement as well as in the peacebuilding process in the country.

Within this context, the project “Schools of Peace as Safe Environments” was developed in San Vicente del Caguán, former FARC territory, as an alliance between the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, Caqueta’s Department of Education, USAID, the International Organization for Migration and UNICEF, and it is operated by Fundación Escuelas de Paz.

The project has three main components: 1. Education – Action – Participation; 2. Resignifying of School Grounds; 3. Systematization and Sustainability. It is centered in the development of the school member’s competences to understand themselves as subjects of rights, who exercise their citizenship wisely, and who take responsibility for their own personal growth. Education in citizenship, peace, reconciliation and forgiveness are fundamental elements in the transformation of the violent practices that affect schools.