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What we wish to achieve?
We aim at the participation of local community in all affairs that affect them in one or another way; intra-cohesion of Asian community to address their integration and contribute to the prospects of peace; motivating youth to aspire high for better future; integrate and involve women and provide them the opportunity to realise their potentials for social cohesion and community development.
Who we are?
We work as a team that include both men and women, on voluntary basis and addresses community issues that we think are important in more then one way. In order to make our work more productive and regular, we contribute a modest amount in cash regularly on monthly basis and utilise it for our small scale projects.
The arrival of JPI:
In order to make our work more systematic and well structured, we named ourselves as Just Peace and registered it as a company limited by guarantee in January 2009.
What we are doing?
ACTVITY NO 1:
Context:
We experienced that Bradford Asian Community is fragmented along ethnic and religious lines that acts as a barrier to their social cohesion and integration. Though this fragmentation may not take a more heinous form yet we felt that there is a need to facilitate a meaningful dialogue that may lead to deeper understanding of each other and inculcate the habit of diversity as an ideal both in thinking and practice.
Activity:
This shared understanding led us to take some action on voluntary basis. Our initial response to this was the arrangement of get-together informal meetings where we discuss issues of common interests, listen to each other problems and shared our general experiences. During such sessions we arrange small refreshments for which we already have raised funds on self help basis.
Outcome:
The most visible outcome of such gatherings was a felling of enhanced bonding and respect to each other views and opinions. Such gathering enabled an open communication that led to our understanding of each other and more peaceful existence at relational levels.
ACTVITY NO 2:
Context:
Bradford Asian Community has a larger young population under the age of 24. Most of them struggle in achieving good grades at GCSE level, which affects their employment prospects. Living within the community and our regular gatherings manifested that most of the parents are worried about their academic output. As most of them are not educated themselves, therefore, are unable to help their children.
Activity:
Some of our members are educated and have a diverse background in teachings at various levels. Such members started devoting their valuable times for community children and offer them free tuition in various subjects. These children, boys and girls, belonged to different Year groups and were helped in subjects that include Maths, Science and English.
Outcome:
The most immediate result was the feeling of aspiring to a better future on the part of those children, as they were motivated to work hard, that their parents reported. Their school reports also testified that their levels of understanding have improved.
ACTVITY NO 3:
Context:
Inter-personal conflicts in a particular neighbourhood and at family level is a consistent feature that may lead to deteriorating the relations if left unaddressed. More importantly conflicts at household level lead to violence that leaves disastrous psychological marks on children, which in turn may affect their performance at school or lowering their future aspirations.
Activity:
As we found that some of the people known to us had problems of various natures ranging from domestic violence to family conflicts, so we decided to initiate an interventionist strategy in order to address these conflicts at grass root level and at an early stage. There we acted as a team and tried to arrange a meeting for the parties involved in conflict. This gave a chance to the conflicting parties to communicate openly and launch a dialogue to address each other concerns and listen to each other positions.
Outcome:
The strategy of intervening in time led to peaceful settlement of conflicting issues.
ACTVITY NO 4:
Context:
Though women in Asian community do interact at family level, yet most of them, being uneducated, experience a more restricted mobility. This restriction on their mobility leads to their isolation, creating negative implications for their mental health while obstructing them to realise their potentials for the whole community.
Activity:
In order to ensure their participation at community level and their integration beyond family levels, some of women from our group stared contacting women in their neighbourhood and arranged regular meeting programmes wherein they could discuss openly their problems. Besides such socialization, they arranged small scale programmes of other nature that included visiting old women of other ethnic origin who lived alone and helped them in various tasks at home like cooking, cleaning. Women arranged their own programmes and used to go to market in groups to socialise and address some of their household needs also.
Outcome:
It provided a platform of socialization to women wherein they could experience being part of bigger communities and realised that they could be involved in tasks more human and social. Furthermore they were also successful in integrating with women of other identities and enhancing the images of peace and love. |
