WOMEN VOLUNTEERS FOR PEACE

Women Volunteers for Peace – WOVOP

Women Volunteers of Peace (WOVOP), a young women-led organization, was founded in May 2019, in Kisumu County, in the western region of Kenya. WOVOP started off as a Students’ Talk Program hosted at Universities with an aim of enhancing the understanding of peace and identifying threats and issues that undermine peace in learning institutions, for instance strikes and school fires. The program also aimed at developing means through which these threats and triggers could be reported and mitigated, considering that Kisumu County has previously been a ‘hotspot’ for violence in every election cycle.

It was evident that the threats to peace in the learning institutions were spilling over to the community which then led to the creation of WOVOP. The organization was founded on the premise that there is an urgent need for resilience in communities due to the adverse nature of trauma in the communities that we work in. We considered it pertinent to initiate creative methods in which we can contribute to increasing young women’s participation in peace processes. Within Kisumu County, an area of Kenya that is rife with inter-ethnic conflicts, we witnessed that women and girls were hesitant to speak about the atrocious crimes that were being committed in their communities lest they become targets to the perpetrators. Inter-ethnic conflict has always led to adverse effects on the social fabric of communities and their livelihood. This has evolved into a very devastating phenomenon. Typical of this volatility, women and girls often bear the brunt.

Against these dynamics, Women Volunteers of Peace considered it crucial to sow seeds of peace in the younger generation through Peace Corners. These Peace Corners have been hubs for women and girls to embrace the culture of sharing their worries and feelings for effective stress and trauma healing management. Through this program, we have created safe spaces and platforms for women to share their stories, learn and understand the different dynamics affecting peaceful co-existence. These corners have been created in learning institutions right from the primary level to the tertiary level.

Due to the COVID pandemic, our engagements had to shift focus to the general community with the establishment of Peace Corners in each of the 7 sub-counties of Kisumu County, each headed by 2 Peace Champions – a woman and a man. The aim of this structure was to engage young people, especially women, in identifying challenges and risks that undermine peace and security in the sub counties by placing them at the apex, playing a critical role in identifying, mitigating, and responding to conflicts in the community as well as uplifting their voices to be active participants in the conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Kisumu County.

WOVOP leverages digital technology through social media as a tool for advocating for a peace agenda by hosting monthly Twitter chats and Zoom meetings for gender and peace education purposes. Through these virtual spaces, we can popularize key messaging around peace in Kisumu and the rest of Kenya.

Currently, WOVOP is running a social media program called Mental Fridays on Instagram live dubbed “HOW ARE YOU?” which has culminated into an online and offline safe space that encourages open discussions on mental healing among women and girls to help break the stigma surrounding mental illness while also reminding the public that help is available. The online sessions are held every Friday hosting 3 people – one of them being a mental health expert to demystify mental healing within the Horn of Africa. The physical sessions are routine monthly check-ins with over 300 volunteers to enhance and inculcate resilience among young women and men within the western region of Kenya.

In early 2020, WOVOP rolled out a campaign called Color Up Peace – Kenya. The campaign, through partnership with Color Up Peace – Ukraine, seeks to invite people from all over the world to submit photographs of what peace represents to them. Later, these photographs are turned into coloring pages for other people to color in and share their visions of peace. The Color Up Peace campaign in Kenya is giving communities and individuals the opportunity to visually re-imagine their world to achieve social change. Art is a critical tool that can be engaged to popularize a culture of peace in our community. Hence, Kenya’s country-specific coloring book is available for download on the Color Up Peace website.