One of the main focus areas this year for the human rights
program is the capacity building of the Lutheran Church of Colombia (IELCO) in
the theme of reconciliation. As the Colombian government and the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are nearing a final signed peace accord, the
IELCO has a great opportunity and responsibility to involve itself in the
reconciling work necessary to build a country of peace and justice.
The human rights program has offered a series of regional workshops regarding reconciliation throughout the year, here is an old post I wrote about them. While the main goal of these workshops was to hold discussions on
the theme of reconciliation, sensitize church members on its importance, and
build the capacity to get involved in reconciliation work, another goal is that
the participants would then go back to their home congregation and replicate
the conversations and activities.
As the year is nearing an end, and we are in a process of
evaluating the activities accomplished, I sent out a survey to all the
participants to see how successful this secondary goal had been.
I was happily surprised with the responses:
The congregation of San Pedro (St. Peter) in southern Bogota
had held its own workshop, specifically with children and their parents. Their goal
was to get the children to feel free talking about the issues surrounding
reconciliation from the house, to the church to the city and to the country.
The workshop ended with many of the children proposing activities and concrete
actions they could do to work towards reconciliation.
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| Members of San Pedro participating in their local workshop. Photo by Pastor Rocio Morales. |
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| More families of San Pedro in their workshop on reconciliation. Photo by Pastor Rocio Morales. |
The congregation of El Divino Redentor (The Divine Redeemer)
in Bucaramanga has already been supporting a local project of reconciliation.
It is a fascinating project, a farm, where people who have been injured by
landmines with ex-combatants (many responsible for planting the landmines) can
learn to work together to grow food, take care of animals and hold meaningful
discussions about forgiveness, justice and reconciliation.
The director of this project participated in the workshop of
IELCO, and also invited the members of Divino Redentor to participate in a
day-long workshop to be held at the farm. Replicating the materials and
activities of the workshop from IELCO, church members were given an opportunity
to be directly involved in reconciling work in the country at a very meaningful
and personal level.
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| Participants at the workshop at the "Self-sustaining Farm for the Rehabilitation of Victims". Photo by Guillermo Gil. |
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| More participants at the reconciliation workshop at the "Self-sustaining Farm for the Rehabilitation of Victims". Photo by Guillermo Gil. |