Programs
Project Goals
- To advocate and bear witness on behalf of those survivors of war, spiritual and cultural injustice. To reduce suffering and offer trauma recovery.
- To train youth, adults and elders as peacemakers and citizen diplomats in communities, schools, religious centers, and homes and create international peacemaker teams and networks to serve in areas of crisis.
- To promote widespread dialogue and create community wide opportunities to reflect on the moral and spiritual questions raised by our world events.
- To reveal the socially beneficial dimensions of service and love through practice, research andeducation.
Goodness is an inherent inextinguishable quality within each individual regardless of circumstance and storytelling activates this limitless human resource
– L. Simms
These goals use a model of the telling of one’s story, ‘affirmative inquiry’ and narrative accounts to identify one’s values and elicit a positive, cooperative and respectful response prior to dialogue venues involving conflicting parties, ie. truth and justice committees, peace negotiations, unifying and revealing common ground amongst leaders.
Through authentic listening and the spoken word, witness peacemaker training and international journeys, FAHAN programs can establish patterns initiating wholeness of body, mind and spirit at the individual and cultural level.
A project objective is to enhance inter-group relations by building trust, tolerance and mutual understanding in the field of transformational preventative diplomacy (conflict resolution) and oral history testimony,teaming youth with leader trainers.
Although there has been great change over the last fifty years, a recent study showed that 30% of high school students said they would participate in racial incidents, and 17% said they would silently support them. The NICEL (The National Institute for Citizen Education in the Law) has layed the ground work for a National Human Rights education initiative, which was timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations.
Teaching the youth of our nation, from the inner city to the suburb, to be compassionate participants and designers of the cultural outreach process, interview training, and vision building is key to the success of widening our children’s global perspective, promoting a vehicle for an experience of Self and purpose, while creating an opportunity for bridging race, religious and cultural relations for our present and future generations. If we are to embrace the shadows of our past, we must offer solutions in the present for an enduring and loving society to evolve.
Our call is to demonstrate new pathways that exemplify how our histories are intricately woven and together we can educate the coming generations historically, compassionately and honestly.