Transformative Arts and Human Rights Education Program
The TAHRE program is Ba Futuru’s sole program with the following project components.
Ba Futuru's 2009 Projects:
Ba Futuru’s Peace Building Support Project aims to build trust and strengthen community leadership and cohesion. This project supports Timor-Leste’s National Recovery Strategy by providing skill development on conflict mitigation for hundreds of at-risk young people, teachers and community leaders. This project builds on Ba Futuru’s prior success working with at-risk populations, including children and youth living in high conflict areas, prison, transitional shelters and IDP camps. Between October of 2008 and October of 2009 Ba Futuru will support the Ministry of Social Solidarity reintegration process by engaging 500 youth, teacher, child protection focal points and community leaders in seminars enhancing their understanding of conflict mitigation, human rights and child protection issues, as well as will provide an additional 500 children and youth with psychosocial and skill building workshops at the Seroja Center.
The Youth Integration and Development Initiative has led to the creation of a vibrant youth center in Dili, called the Seroja Center for Peace, in order to actively and positively engage Timor’s largest and most critical demographic, young people, by providing outlets and activities that afford them opportunities to enhance their personal and social development. Ba Futuru manages the Seroja Center in partnership with the local community providing classes ranging from traditional dance to English.
The Strengthening Peace in the Lives of Children- Stopping the Violence Project is a new project beginning in 2009. This project supports the objectives of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (which has been ratified by the government of Timor-Leste) by strengthening the capacity of local government officials – teachers and school administrators from the Ministry of Education and Child Protection District Based Officers (CPOs) from the Ministry of Social Solidarity as well as parents, school directors, and children. Such capacity building will improve the abilities of local actors to promote the rights of children, while also assisting in the development of child rights and child protection mechanisms in schools and communities at the grassroots level. The ultimate objective of this project is to stop the use of violence as discipline, as well as other forms of corporal punishment, in schools through strengthening local child protection networks and teachers’ ability to provide positive classroom management.
Since July 2007 Ba Futuru has been working to develop a psychosocial recovery component of its ongoing TAHRE Program in order to fill the void of service providers in the area of trauma healing and community recovery in Timor-Leste. This project works with a dynamic Timorese woman named Ina Verella Bradridge, who has a Masters from Southern Cross University, as well as various other visiting lecturers from Southern Cross University to provide an internationally accredited training program in Timor-Leste based on the esteemed trauma healing curriculum of Professor Judy Atkinson. After 8 Units of this training program students are eligible for a degree in Community Recovery from SCU. The current students include six of Ba Futuru’s staff as well as approximately 30 additional service providers from safe houses, government agencies and mental health NGOs across Timor-Leste.
The long-term objective is to professionalize counselling and trauma recovery services in Timor-Leste. In order to make this possible Ba Futuru has partnered with Southern Cross University Australia, Pradet, Hope, UNICEF, and the RDTL Government, and has this project has gained sponsorship from AusAID, Timor Children’s Fund and UNICEF. Together we hope to develop a thriving social services sector with trained competent therapists that can help Timor-Leste recover from its societal trauma and further develop a culture of peace.
Community Peace Building Support Network
The Community Peace Building Support Network project began in August of 2009 with support from the Institute of Foreign Cultural Relations Germany. This project serves to augment the Peace Building Support Project which is finishing in September of 2009. The Peace Building Support Project was conducted by Ba Futuru in coordination with the UNDP and the Ministry of Social Solidarity that provides IDP returnee communities. This project will build on that previous work by responding to the need for greater understanding and skill building in conflict resolution, human rights, negotiation and non-violence in high-risk areas. Additionally, it will provide a sustainable monitoring and implementation structure through the creation of community response teams (CRTs).
Ba Futuru has seen the positive impact that its trainings have on the communities through decreases in violence and increased use of non-violent mechanisms for conflict resolution, yet it has also seen the necessity of having permanent, community-based systems such as those that would be provided by the CRTs. In the trainings conducted by Ba Futuru, the overwhelming request in post-evaluations is for ongoing support and mentoring and a continued presence of Ba Futuru expert staff in communities. Thus, this project will respond to that need by allowing for continuation of the already proven methods associated with our trainings and then bolstering those methods with permanent, established CRTs. This project will compliment the President of Timor-Leste's ‘Dili - City of Peace’ campaign.
Income Generation, Peace & Development Project for Atauro Island
In an effort to bring income generation opportunities to the most rural part of Dili District - Atauro Island, where people are living under extremely impoverished and difficult circumstances - Ba Futuru is working together with the local non-governmental organization Roman Luan to enact the Income Generation, Peace & Development Project. The pilot of this project which runs until December of 2009 is funed by the Anti-Poverty Campaign of the Office of the President and the government of Timor-Leste.
This project will help to build an educated and empowered local leadership, especially around protection of vulnerable people (including women and children) as well as around planning, decision-making, analyzing, organizing, mobilizing and structuring community development projects. In addition to this, this project will allow for an injection of materials and the development of further infrastructure for eco tourism and income generation activities. Although this project will work with community leadership across the island, it will also pilot cooperatives for women and fishermen in one community which will be extended to all five sucos if successfully in 2010.
This project will support the government of Timor-Leste’s priorities for 2009 in the areas of rural development, human resources development and effective and clean government through poverty reduction, income generation activities and training for youth and women and the strengthening of local infrastructure and governance structures for sustainable development. This project will also support Timor-Leste’s ability to comply with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This project will progress MDG 1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, MDG 3 to promote gender equality and empower women, MDG 4 to reduce child mortality and MDG 5 to improve maternal health.
Since its founding in 2004, Ba Futuru has run the TAHRE program with more than seventeen thousand children, youth, community leaders and NGO workers across 9 districts of East Timor. The primary program curriculum, the TAHRE Guide, provides workshops that help to process the negative effects of conflict and gain the necessary skills to engage prevent conflict.
The TAHRE curriculum also includes skill building activities about non-violent conflict resolution, human rights and child rights, as well as capacity building on assiting people with processing trauma and child protection for youth and adults. A supplementary manual about non-violent discipline is also used for positive discipline training for adults.
