Take Five: Tutu Foundation UK and the peace principle

Since it was first established in 2007, The Tutu Foundation UK has worked tirelessly to prevent and resolve conflict.
It aims to help people build peaceful communities across the UK by providing facilitation and mediation services based on the principles of the South African concept of Ubuntu.
Inspired and backed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his wife Mrs Leah Tutu, it built on his determination to  seek reconciliation rather than revenge following the overthrow of Apartheid.
There is even an Annual Peace Summit staged with long term partner Regent’s University London.
Applying these principals in the UK has resulted in some remarkable achievements in recent years. Here are five of TFUK's groundbreaking projects:

The Belfast Project

The Challenge: The Good Friday Agreement was signed on Friday 10th April 1998, approved through two referenda on 22nd May and reinforced on 2nd December 1999.
However, there remained concerns about the vulnerability of the peace and the need to address a continuing sense in the Loyalist Para-military groups. Whilst peace has saved lives and brought increased safety, it has not delivered any significant change to the quality of day to day life in their communities.
Belfast must be one of the most ‘fractured communities in the UK’ and therefore must be a focus for the work of the Tutu Foundation UK (TFUK).

Our Purpose
The TFUK aims to build peace in fractured communities in the UK through building on Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s peace and reconciliation work all over the world.
Promote community inclusion and social cohesion through Conversations for Change.
Support emergent local leaders, including young people in the community, by promoting capacity building, social responsibility and accountability.
Deliver training and personal development based on the TFUK’s work, particularly amongst young people and within seldom heard communities.
Strengthen local community groups, through Ubuntu based leadership, coaching and a facilitation skills personal development programme.
Encourage the effective spread of Ubuntu facilitation & mediation practice amongst our partners in health and social care, as well as the wider public sector.
Nurture culturally competent restorative justice practices, to meet the needs of people within communities in conflict.
Achievements
The TFUK brought together for the first time important figures in disparate and sometimes opposing loyalist para-military groups.
The TFUK facilitated a series of meetings to explore the challenges and hopes, including the need to improve life chances for young men in the community. The perceived issues included high unemployment, low levels of educational achievement and a need to put aside differences for any progress to be made.
The group worked collaboratively to produce a joint position statement and action plan instead of working in silos and following individual agendas.

The Mediation Training Project

The Challenge: The TFUK has been aware of the number of conflict situations in key professions within the UK. Many were in community work and medical settings.
Most participants in existing mediation training courses were drawn from legal professions and many courses focused on legal conflicts. The challenge was to provide an accredited psychologically informed mediation training based on the Ubuntu philosophy.
Regent’s University mediation training team had many years experience of providing an accredited mediation training based on an existential approach.
Existential and Ubuntu philosophy share the importance placed on relatedness and working to understand each person’s worldview. This results in a deeper mediation transformational experience.

Our Purpose
The TFUK aims to build peace in fractured communities in the UK through building on Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s peace and reconciliation work all over the world.
Promote community inclusion and social cohesion through Conversations for Change.
Support emergent local leaders, including young people in the community, by promoting capacity building, social responsibility and accountability.
Deliver training and personal development based on the TFUK’s work, particularly amongst young people and within seldom heard communities.
Strengthen local community groups, through Ubuntu based leadership,
coaching and a facilitation skills personal development programme.
Encourage the effective spread of Ubuntu facilitation & mediation practice amongst our partners in health and social care, as well as the wider
public sector.
Nurture culturally competent restorative justice practices, to meet the
needs of people within communities in conflict.

Achievements
A partnership between the team at Regent’s and The TFUK provided a way to take on this challenge.
Mediation accredited training courses are costly. The Partnership with The TFUK enabled two cohorts, each of 16 participants, to complete training as accredited mediators.
These mediators were then in a position to cascade the training within their organisations. Regent’s offered annual refresher one day courses to ensure that graduates of the programme received “Continuous Professional Development” to maintain their mediation skills.

Westway Trust Review Into Institutional Racism

The Challenge: Community perception that all the land under the Westway was under the control of the Westway Trust, and that it was given to the community as a result of the building of the A40 (M) Westway elevated dual carriageway.
Public allegations of institutional racism directed at the Westway Trust at its 2015, 2016, 2017 Annual General Meetings.
Local campaign group ‘Westway 23’ established as a direct result of the Westway Trust - Destination Westway Strategy.
Trustee composition lacking diverse representation from the local community. Mistrust and lack of confidence in the Westway Trust leadership.?Cultural Indifference and lack of meaningful and sustained community engagement.

Our Purpose
The TFUK aims to build peace in fractured communities in the UK through building on Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s peace and reconciliation work all over the world.
Promote inclusion and social cohesion through effective and meaningful engagement.
Support leaders and organisations to better serve their communities by promoting cultural competence, good governance, social responsibility and accountability.
Upskill and empower communities and organisations to better understand, identify and address institutional racism through an evidence-based approach.
Utilise reparatory justice model to develop meaningful ways to address
marginalisation, social exclusion, historic wrongs and injustice.

Terms of reference for the review developed and underpinned by the Macpherson definition of Institutional Racism.
Developed and sustained a Community Advisory Group (CAG) to ensure trust and confidence to the review process with terms of reference.
Creation of Secure Portal and a Public Call for Evidence. 94 people interviewed 19,000 documents reviewed. Full Report, Executive Summary and 3 Annexes produced.
Report recommendations part of a Reparatory Justice Approach; formal apology, guarantees of non-repetition, restitution - individual and institutional, compensation, rehabilitation and satisfaction.
Change in the composition of the Westway Trust Trustees, to include amore diverse range of Trustees who are from the community.
Change in Trust to one of community.
CAG working alongside the Trust.
Westway Trust makes a formal apology to the community. Leader of Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council (RBKC) Cllr. Elizabeth Campbell makes the following statement: ‘it is important that the Council too takes the publication of the

Ubuntu Roundtables

The Challenge: The Ubuntu Round Tables are a joint project between The TFUK and Youth Futures. The Round Tables bring disenfranchised young people and their local police officers together to build respect and understanding and so reduce Police- Youth antagonism and build the trust that underpins safety on our streets.
The Youth-Led philosophy that underpins the project recognises and works to mitigate the power imbalance that exists between the young people and the police to create the opportunity for all participants to talk openly and honestly, and to hear each other.
The project creates an environment that enables disaffected youth and police to be open to each other, with an aim of deepening understanding and respect both ways. Together they engage in exercises requiring frank speaking and respectful listening. The outcomes are tangible, for example when the police invited the young people to conduct a stop and search on themselves. The young people experienced the responsibility that goes along with power while the police put themselves in a vulnerable position.

Our Purpose
The TFUK aims to build peace in fractured communities in the UK through building on Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s peace and reconciliation work all over the world.
Promote community inclusion and social cohesion through Conversations for Change.
Support emergent local leaders, including young people in the community, by promoting capacity building, social responsibility and accountability.
Deliver training and personal development based on the TFUK’s work, particularly amongst young people and within seldom heard communities.
Strengthen local community groups, through Ubuntu based leadership, coaching and a facilitation skills personal development programme.
Encourage the effective spread of Ubuntu facilitation & mediation practice amongst our partners in health and social care, as well as the wider public sector.
Nurture culturally competent restorative justice practices, to meet the needs of people within communities in conflict.

Achievements
The project is Youth-Led as it enables and empowers young people to take control and to organize.
The project provides formal, apprenticeship and informal training opportunities for young people to learn facilitation and leadership skills.
Through this project, young leaders have facilitated and worked with over a hundred police officers, and engaged with a group of 200 young people.
These young leaders have been involved in policy work and presented their findings at a Parliamentary symposium alongside David Lammy MP, demonstrating the importance of nurturing relationships and common ground between police and those that are being policed.
Essential for the long term is the continuation of training new young facilitators who can intuitively understand and build trust in the communities they are working with. Plans in the pipeline for Phase 2 include training more young facilitators and delivering even more roundtables.

Peace Summit Series at Regent’s

The Challenge:The TFUK has established an Annual Peace Summit with our long term partner Regent’s University London.
Each year we focus on an area of our work to help individuals and communities overcome or prevent conflict and the enormous challenges they face trying to do that.
Mediation is a crucial tool advocated by The TFUK. It is acknowledged that mediators can achieve resolutions in cases even where negotiations have failed. Mediators are coached to explore the underlying needs and interests of the parties, to facilitate dialogue where parties no longer communicate effectively. They can separate the people from the problem, i.e. make the problem ‘the enemy’, allowing for example, ‘red lines’ to disappear and ‘non- negotiable’ issues be put back on the table.

Our Purpose
The TFUK aims to build peace in fractured communities in the UK through building on Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s peace and reconciliation work all over the world.
Promote community inclusion and social cohesion through Conversations for Change.
Support emergent local leaders, including young people in the community, by promoting capacity building, social responsibility and accountability.
Deliver training and personal development based on the TFUK’s work, particularly amongst young people and within seldom heard communities.
Strengthen local community groups, through Ubuntu based leadership, ?coaching and a facilitation skills personal development programme.
Encourage the effective spread of Ubuntu facilitation & mediation practice amongst our partners in health and social care, as well as the wider ?public sector.
Nurture culturally competent restorative justice practices, to meet the ?needs of people within communities in conflict. ?Achievements
Past Summits have focused on youth and brought together young people from a diverse range of schools involved and trained with the TFUK’s programmes.
Other Summits have focused on mediation in the international context. We had speakers with experience from Northern Ireland, Bosnia and South Africa.
Work is currently underway with Regent’s University London on plans for a Summit cycle in future years.

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