Ecuador Peace Project

What started with a pop-up chat request on facebook with a former student less than a year ago finished with a week of workshops, presentations and interviews in Ecuador's Colombian border region. Santiago Guerrero was a student of mine in Peace and Conflict Studies at United World College Costa Rica. So, when he was imagining a project for working with Ecuadorean and Colombian refugee youth for peace building and conflict transformation, he invited me to be the guest facilitator. I told him, in a heartbeat, Yes! I would love to be a part of that effort.

The trip was packed. The first three days were in a remote, rural village right on the border with Colombia, where everyone kept pointing across the river and showing me the coca plantations. In this village we went through a series of ATV and DPS processes to look at conflict, communication, and ways that social grouping and stereotyping existed and could be transformed. The young people were wonderful and it was great to see the high level of integration within the group. By the end of the project, they were organizing their own gatherings and events, cross-culturally. So, peace is on the way, contact and positive peace building working again.

One of the strangest things for me was being in the role of "expert" and a bit of a celebrity. In the small city of Tulcan, I was invited to give talks to the provincial government and some rural communities on the nature of conflict transformation. I was also interviewed by two television stations, and five news paper reporters. It was a novelty for me to be walking in a march and have a microphone thrust into your face and asked for a comment or explanation of what was happening. I guess this is what happens to you when you get a PhD (just kidding). It was a nice experience but also showed me that people are actually hungry for information and understanding of how to transform conflicts and achieve peace.

Interest can be turned into action, lets hope that these seeds of peace planted there in northern Ecuador can continue to grow.