Hope for healing and peace in  the world grows from Oklahoma City’s 1995 tragedy

The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, created to honour those who died or were traumatized by the 1995 bombing of the city’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, has become a beacon of hope, healing and recovery around the world. Located in a 3.3-acre site created by the demolition of three buildings damaged in the blast, the Memorial and Museum honours victims, survivors and rescue workers, educates visitors about the impact of violence, and inspires hope and healing by sharing lessons learned by those who were affected.

Its Reflections of Hope Award recognizes people around the world who exemplify hope in the midst of tragedy, respond selflessly, and give of themselves to improve the lives of others. The award, established in 2005 as part of the 10th commemoration of the tragedy that killed 168 people in an act of US domestic terrorism, honors a living person or group whose extraordinary work has significantly impacted a community, state or nation, and shows that hope not only survives but also thrives in the wake of political violence.

The first award, in 2005, went to the Voice of Afghan Women Radio Kabul, Afganistan's first radio station managed by women. Durga Ghimire, co-founder of Tamakoshi Service Society in Ramechhap, Nepal, received the 2006 award. In the midst of civil war, she and her husband Jagdish built a voluntary grassroots organization of more than 6,000 marginalized people in 40 villages that was the only agency providing preventive and reproductive health care, sustainable agriculture, water supply and rural micro-enterprise in guerilla controlled areas.

In 2007, the award went to Seeds of Peace, which reverses legacies of hatred by nurturing friendships and training young leaders in conflict resolution skills so they can become the seeds of enduring peace. Since the first 46 Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian teenagers came together in 1993, Seeds of Peace has developed a leadership network of more than 3,000 young people around the world including Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Pakistan, India and the US. In 2008, the Reflections of Hope award honoured Caroline for Kibera, Inc. (see below for details of its work).

The museum is also reaching out, through A Network of Hope: A Resource to Help, to share the lessons it has learned in how communities can rebuild and heal after a devastating disaster, as well as useful resources and information. The project, suggested in 2006 by Prudence Bushnell, US ambassador to Kenya when the US embassy there was bombed in 1998, brought together community leaders to reflect on what they had learned about needs, reactions and best practices. Then the project expanded outward to look at lessons learned by other communities, including New York City after the World Trade Center terrorist attack; cities in South Carolina and Florida after Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew; cities in California and Japan hit by earthquakes, flood-stricken Iowa communities, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Many exhibits in the museum show how people around the world, and across the US, responded to the tragedy by offering hope. An exhibition of quilts and textiles made by people around the world as a way of offering their prayers for hope and healing to the people of Oklahoma City, entitled Sharing Hope: One Stitch at a Time, opened Jan. 12, 2008. The museum also provides resources for teachers and schools, including The Hope Trunk, which uses the story of the bombing to educate students about the need to find more peaceful means to solve differences, and hosts teacher training programs. Each year, a Model United Nations Security Council brings together 15 Oklahoma high schools to discuss world issues and events, helping students understand the UN’s role on the world stage and the challenges of providing a safe and neutral arena for global interaction.

This story was prepared from materials on the Oklahoma City Memorial and Museum website, including the Reflections of Hope Award page, Quilt and Textiles Exhibit Showing Fabric of Hope Now on Display, A Network of Hope – A Resource to Help, and Educational Resources.

 

 

Carolina for Kibera, Inc., 2008 Reflections of Hope award winner

 

Kibera, east Africa’s largest slum, is a microcosm of many of the world’s most vexing issues – poverty, poor healthcare, severe water shortage, the spread of HIV infection, and lack of women’s rights. More than 700,000 people live in a 630-acre area (about 2.5 square kilometers) outside of Nairobi, Kenya. It is one of the most densely populated urban settlements in the world. The vast majority of Kibera’s residents live in abject poverty with few government services. Kibera also faces an exploding youth population, which now represents over half of the slum’s entire population.

Carolina for Kibera (CFK) was founded by Rye Barcott, then an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to help prevent ethnic and religious violence in Kibera through a community-based sports program. In the summer of 2001, Barcott teamed up with Salim Mohamed who was managing the Information and Management Department of the Mathare Youth Sports Association in another informal settlement in Nairobi. Barcott also reunited with the late Tabitha Atieno Festo, a registered nurse and resident of Kibera who had established a small medical clinic from a grant of $26 that Barcott had given her the previous summer to sell vegetables.

CFK received its initial funding in the form of a $30,000 start-up grant from the Ford Foundation. A year later, two undergraduates from the United States, Karen Austrian and Emily Verellen, volunteered in Kibera with CFK and helped young women in Kibera create CFK’s third program, The Binti Pamoja (Daughters United) Center, establishing a safe space for young girls to address issues unique to them. Youth in Kibera subsequently developed the Taka ni Pato (Trash is Cash) and Base of the Pyramid programs in 2005 in order to address the dearth of employment opportunities in Kibera.

CFK, Inc. is the patron of all four CFK-Kenya programs: the Youth Sports Program, Tabitha Clinic, Taka ni Pato, and the Binti Pamoja Center. Although there is a high degree of collaboration, each program is operationally and financially autonomous. Most importantly, each program is led by residents of Kibera. Oversight and governing is provided by an executive committee composed of leading members of CFK and a member of the CFK-Kenya Board of Trustees.

This information comes from the Carolina for Kibera website.

 


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