Project summary
Our Vision --Fostering sustainable peace in Sierra Leone through reviving our communities’ traditions and values of confession, forgiveness and reconciliation.
Project Summary
Fambul Tok (Krio for “Family Talk”) is a face-to-face community owned program that brings together perpetrators and victims of the violence in Sierra Leone’s eleven-year civil war through ceremonies rooted in the local traditions of the villages that were affected. It provides Sierra Leonean citizens with an opportunity to come to terms with what happened during the war, to dialogue, to experience healing, and to chart a new path forward -- together.
Launched in early 2008, Fambul Tok is built upon Sierra Leone’s “family talk” tradition of discussing and resolving issues within the security of a family circle. The program works at the village level to help communities organize ceremonies that include truth-telling bonfires and traditional cleansing ceremonies, practices not employed since before the war. Through drawing on age-old traditions and practices of confession, apology and forgiveness, Fambul Tok has revived Sierra Leoneans’ rightful pride in their culture.
Developed and implemented by Sierra Leonean human rights organization, Forum of Conscience, and U.S.-based operating foundation, Catalyst for Peace, Fambul Tok embodies the most leading-edge processes of consultative program design and “accompaniment” models of partnership – between in-country and outside organizations, as well as between implementing organizations and the communities of implementation. The program is structuring community ownership at every level. In so doing, it exemplifies a new path for the international community in post-conflict reconstruction.
Fambul Tok is rooted in the understanding that reconciliation is a process and not a one-time event, and thus the program works with communities on a long-term basis. It ensures full community engagement, initially through consultations to determine whether people are ready to reconcile, and subsequently through community-led preparations and outreach for Fambul Tok ceremonies.
Following the ceremonies, Fambul Tok works with the communities to organize activities to support and sustain the reconciliation process. These have included radio-listening clubs, football games, and even village-initiated community farms, through which newly reconciled individuals are able to come together for the good of the community.
Originally conceived as a chiefdom-level program that would involve 161 ceremonies around the country, Fambul Tok has evolved to meet the needs of fellow Sierra Leoneans who have asked for ceremonies to be held at the much smaller level of village groupings – known as “sections “ – that will involve thousands of ceremonies to be held over the next several years.
This community-healing process of reconciliation and forgiveness is designed to address the roots of conflict at the local level, and to restore dignity to the lives of those who suffered most directly from violence. The work helps war-affected individuals reflect on the past and move forward in ways that avert the renewal of aggressions. By grounding reconciliation in traditional practices, it also helps create healthy communities capable of building new foundations of peace.
Fambul Tok is a distinctly Sierra Leonean initiative. It is not rooted in Western concepts of blame and retribution, but rather in African communal sensibilities that emphasize the need for communities to be whole, with each member playing a role, if peace and development are to be achieved for the nation at large.
Sierra Leone is entering a new era now with the final phases of internationally driven institutions such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court coming to a close. Fambul Tok is helping meet the demands of this new phase in the country’s post-conflict history by broadening its campaign to all regions of Sierra Leone, with the belief that the time for peace has come.
Our approach
Fambul Tok is rooted in consultative processes to foster local ownership of the program at every level, to create maximum impact in the community healing process in Sierra Leone.
Fambul Tok is inspired by the conviction that each person has the power, goodness and capacity to contribute to society in helpful and healthy ways. But when people experience violence and hurt, those innate capacities can become be suppressed, often causing individuals to act in ways contrary to their nature. Fambul Tok thus works to support individual and community healing through traditional practices which have proved effective in the past, and with the aid of local leaders who provide guidance and moral support in the process of forgiveness and reconciliation.
As these activities take root at the community level, local networks within and among villages are created to gather wisdom and share lessons learned. These networks help provide opportunities for on-going learning, and will continue to build on local resources and capacities to help foster an environment of healing.
Forum of Conscience (www.forumofconscience.org) is a Sierra Leone-based human rights organization. Catalyst for Peace (www.catalystforpeace.org) is a U.S.-based foundation which supports locally rooted reconciliation processes in post-conflict Africa.
For more information, contact:
Libby Hoffman, President, Catalyst for Peace, libby@catalystforpeace.org
John Caulker, Director, Forum of Conscience, johncaulkerfoc@yahoo.com
