Ba Futuru's Organizational Background
Ba Futuru emerged from months of discussions and art sessions with children in the Tabessi and Pantai Kelapa neighborhoods in Dili, Timor-Leste. After seeing a need for and interest in consistent arts and human rights education and constructive engagement on issues of violence, Ba Futuru was founded. Commitment to helping children confront the challenges they face by facilitating their empowerment led Ba Futuru’s founders to develop the TAHRE curriculum.
The TAHRE curriculum draws on the experience of similar programming done in Kosovo, which found that organizing creative activities for children in post-conflict areas contributed substantially to their well being by offering children the chance to be children – to regain their self-confidence and joy – in order to help them cope and let them look to the future. Using personal and group transformation activities and interactive learning, the TAHRE program constructs a safe environment for children to face and process their trauma. The TAHRE curriculum was developed to be culturally sensitive and specific Timor-Leste, and is continually being refined toward this goal.
Once the cross-disciplinary TAHRE curriculum was developed, it was used in an initial six-week pilot program in Saint Bakhita orphanage in Dili, Timor-Leste, which concluded in December of 2004. Through the use of pre- and post-evaluations with children and childcare center staff, the TAHRE program was documented as increasing children’s ability to articulate their interests and needs, and it proved to build participant self-confidence.
Since then, Ba Futuru has incorporated feedback from participants, orphanage staff and program evaluations to refine the TAHRE curriculum. Ba Futuru is consulting with experts in various related fields to help refine the project.
Pending funding, between June and September 2004, the second pilot TAHRE program implementation will take place, which will be followed by an evaluation by Belun. Belun is a local civil society capacity development organization working in Timor-Leste. Belun will be working with Ba Futuru doing monitoring and evaluation during the second pilot program.
Ba Futuru is a non-profit development organization established in Timor-Leste in 2004. The vision of Ba Futuru is to transform mistrust and violence into peace and self-directed growth by supporting the people of Timor-Leste to engage in creating a positive future for themselves, their families and their communities. This vision is reflected in the name “Ba Futuru,” which in Tetun means “For the Future.” Ba Futuru's mission is to contribute to peace-building and sustainable human development by facilitating the psychosocial recovery of conflict-affected, vulnerable and at-risk children and youth, and by developing the knowledge, skills and values of community leaders, young people and their carers in the areas of human rights, children’s rights, child protection and non-violent conflict transformation. Ba Futuru’s activities are founded on the principles of mutual learning, capacity development, artistic self-expression and human rights based programming.
