New Sites of Conscience Programs
The Coalition’s Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund provides both financial and technical support for member sites to develop projects that use their histories to open dialogue on a pressing concern facing their communities today. Below is a list of projects the Fund is supporting.
The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum’s New Exhibit Tackles “Unfinished Business” (USA)
Following the legacy of social reformer, Jane Addams, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum will introduce a new interactive exhibit to foster ongoing understanding among people of different backgrounds on pressing contemporary social issues. The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum serves as a dynamic memorial to Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jane Addams (1860-1935) and other resident social reformers whose work influenced the lives of their immigrant neighbors as well as national and international public policy. The Hull-House Museum makes connections between the work of these residents and important social issues today. The Museum preserves and develops the original Hull-House site for the interpretation and continuation of the historic settlement house vision, linking research, education, and social engagement.
The new exhibit called “Unfinished Business”, supported by the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, raises awareness of critical social issues that have remained unresolved since Jane Addams’ day. The exhibit will use interactive stations on three contemporary “unfinished” issues: Juvenile Justice, Immigration and Labor, and Funding Social Change. The stations, called “Think Outside of the Box”, “Find your Voice” and “Time for Change” aim to bring the visitors “from history to action”. The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum is working with community partners to draw connections between the Hull-House history and contemporary issues. The exhibit will be targeted at the museum’s core constituencies: the general public, youth and immigrant communities. It will empower visitors to become active agents of social change, encouraging them to explore the various ways they can make a difference.
Students ‘Open their Eyes’ to Injustice and Indifference at the Museum of Memory in Rosario (Argentina)
As the Museo de la Memoria de Rosario (Museum of Memory of Rosario) prepares to open its new permanent building, it is developing an innovative program to challenge Rosario’s collective indifference to human rights abuse. For many years human rights organizations in Rosario called for a place to retrieve and protect the memory of Argentina’s most recent dictatorship. The Museum of Memory answered this call and over time it has become a benchmark institution on issues of memory and human rights. On March 1 2010, after nearly a decade of struggles and delays, the museum received the keys to a former army headquarters used during Argentina’s last dictatorship (1976-1983). Scheduled to open in December 2010, this historic building will become the Museum of Memory’s permanent site and will include new collections and programs to address the history of Argentina’s state terrorism. For one of the new programs, supported by the International Coalition’s Project Support Fund, the museum will design new materials and an interactive workshop to encourage Rosario’s students to think about their role in preventing what happened in Argentina from recurring. The historic site will play an important part in this project titled “Opening our Eyes”. As a symbol of suffering and a pervasive reminder of the consequences of public indifference the historic space will be used to trigger reflection on the students’ own civic responsibility to stop injustice and abuse. A booklet, filled with historic photographs, testimonies and press clips, will serve as a guide through the museum’s different rooms and exhibits. After the site visit, students will participate in a workshop where they will share their experience in the space and discuss how it made them explore their own role in today’s abuses. Students will receive a digital copy of the booklet to assist them with additional research and to encourage them to consider how continuously ‘opening our eyes’ to injustice is a first step towards social and political transformation.
“Talking About…Im/migration”: Chicago Cultural Alliance Supports Ethnic Museums as Centers for Dialogue (USA)
In a city shaped by a multi-ethnic/immigrant demography, the Chicago Cultural Alliance aims to foster a more comprehensive understanding of immigration by expanding its current “Talking About…Im/migration” dialogue series. The Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA) is a consortium of 26 community-based ethnic museums, cultural centers, and historical societies in Chicago that works to raise public awareness of the city’s cultural diversity through the first voice perspective of community members. With Project Support Fund, “Talking About…Im/migration” will now be expanded to offer more extensive training for the eight original participating museums, provide basic dialogue facilitation training for three new community museums, and expand the current dialogue sessions to include community-based dialogues, cross-cultural dialogues, and public panel discussions. The new program will use The Hapa Project (by photographer Kip Fulbeck) as an impetus for conversation. The Hapa Project is a multiracial identity art project, offering a forum for multiracial people to answer the question “What are you?” in their own words. With this exhibition CCA hopes to spur discussions of background and ancestry and encourage new members of the participating ethnic communities to share their immigration stories. Additionally “Talking About…Im/migration will focus on the wider implications and circumstances of immigration and will connect local immigration issues to the national conversation in order to strengthen the capacity of ethnic museums as centers for dialogue on immigration.
Paine Memorial to the Disappeared Partners with Villa Grimaldi to Build its Capacity as a Site of Conscience (Chile)
The Paine Memorial to the Disappeared has teamed up with La Corporacion Parque Por La Paz Villa Grimaldi (Villa Grimaldi) to strengthen its capacity as an enduring memorial and cultural center. In 1973, 70 people from Paine (a rural county located south of Santiago in Chile) disappeared and/or were executed. According to Chile’s official truth commission report, Paine suffered the highest per capita rate of disappearance of any Chilean settlement during the Pinochet dictatorship. The Paine Memorial is a timber ‘forest’ of one thousand individual logs, minus 70, to represent the human loss. Each missing log is replaced by a family mosaic, made by the victims’ relatives. Today, Paine faces serious development and preservation challenges. Pursuing the concept of “una memoria viva” (“living memory”), Paine Memorial hoped to construct a cultural center and develop projects to promote awareness and participation in the local community. These plans, however, have been hampered by limited government funding. In response, Paine Memorial will work closely over the next year with Villa Grimaldi on a comprehensive plan towards increased self-sufficiency. Villa Grimaldi, a Villa converted into a center of torture and detention during the Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, raises awareness of torture and detention and connects the site’s history with pressing social concerns today. The partnership, supported by the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, will include a staff exchange that will allow both sites to learn from each other’s experiences in designing, implementing and sustaining their properties and educational programs. Through this exchange, the Paine Memorial hopes to strengthen its organizational capacity and fulfill its mission to promote “una memoria viva” through educational platforms and outreach programs.
Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP)’s New Mobile Exhibits Inspire Participants to “Remember Our Past– and Work for Our Future” (Philippines)
In December 2009, martial law was declared in the Philippines for the first time since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos (1972 – 1981). In this context, the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) is designing four new traveling exhibits to broaden awareness of the history of Marco’s martial law. TFDP is a national human rights organization dedicated to documenting human rights violations, conducting human rights education work and providing legal and material assistance to victims and their families. In January 2009, TFDP opened an expanded Museum of Courage and Resistance to address past and present human rights questions in the Philippines. 
As new threats of repression arise, TFDP is developing mobile exhibits to bring the country’s history to new audiences across the country. With support from the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, the mobile exhibits titled “Remembering Our Past: Repression and Resistance – Working for Our Future: Human Rights and Dignity for All!” will travel to schools and communities around the Philippines over ten months. The exhibits are organized around four themes, each depicting the victimization of specific groups during the Marcos dictatorship: 1) the Negros Nine (referring to the three priests and six lay workers from the island of Negros charged with multiple murders in 1983); 2) women; 3) peasants; and 4) trade unions. As part of the exhibits, TFDP will host discussions to draw connections between these past abuses and current efforts to promote a more tolerant Philippine society. Participants, who range from students to civil society members and government officials, will be encouraged to volunteer and take an active role in defending and advancing human rights in their communities.
Terezín Memorial Brings Realities of Totalitarianism Close to Home for Today’s Youth (Czech Republic)
Terezín Memorial is bringing the lessons of totalitarianism close to home for today’s youth by remembering a familiar environment: the school. A new program “Being a Pupil in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” teaches students about the experiences of their counterparts during the Nazi occupation of what was then the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and what is today the Czech Republic.
Terezín Memorial, a former Jewish ghetto and transit station to death camps during the Holocaust not only commemorates victims of the Nazi persecution, but also employs its history to address the re-emergence of extreme rightist, neo-Nazi and nationalistic groups. Responding to the alarming rise of neo-Nazi groups in the Czech Republic today, the Terezín Memorial’s new program, supported by the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, aims to enable students to challenge current racist and anti-Semitic messages. A tour of Terezín’s Small Fortress, a former Gestapo prison, will teach school students about the persecution of students during the Nazi regime and the impact of Nazism on the school system. In workshops, using newly-developed worksheets, students will analyze Nazi efforts to control schooling and education to understand how racist and anti-Semitic messages reach young people today. As part of the program, Terezín Memorial will also develop an expanded online area where students can compile the history of their own school, share their experience of the program and discuss issues of discrimination and personal responsibility then and now.
Diversity Challenges creates a safe space for dialogue with “After Conflict Experiences” (Northern Ireland)
Diversity Challenges’ new dialogue program, “After Conflict Experiences”, aims to promote reconciliation and shared understanding of the recent conflict in and about Northern Ireland. Diversity Challenges works to assist culturally specific groups in Northern Ireland to integrate community relations principles and considerations in all aspects of their work.
“After Conflict Experiences”, supported by the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, will bring together a variety of participants, including those who served during the conflict, to reflect and talk openly with each other in a safe space about their different experiences and perspectives of the conflict. These talks will begin with participants visiting and photographing identified sites of conflict. The program aims to build relationships between the participants and connect them with local community organizations that support Diversity Challenges’ work and goals. Building on this pilot, Diversity Challenges will develop “After Conflict Experiences” into a comprehensive program that increases understanding and offers support to those affected by the conflict in Northern Ireland.
Healing Through Remembering (Northern Ireland) Exchanges Experiences with the House of the Wannsee Conference (Berlin) to Develop New Exhibit
In the aftermath of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Healing Through Remembering will travel to Berlin to participate in a staff exchange with the House of the Wannsee Conference and visit other local museums remembering conflict. Healing Through Remembering (HTR) is an extensive cross-community project where individual members with differing political, social and religious perspectives come together to focus on how best to deal with the past relating to the conflict in and about Northern Ireland. The staff exchange, supported by the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, will enable HTR to learn from the experience of the House of the Wannsee Conference – where Nazi leadership in 1942 discussed the planned deportation and murder of all European Jews – in becoming a well accepted museum that commemorates histories of conflict while promoting understanding and dialogue about the issues surrounding it. HTR will also visit other local museums such as the Stasi Prison Museum and the DDR Museum – the only museum dedicated to remembering the everyday life in the former East Germany. HTR will develop an exhibition on “Everyday Objects Transformed by Conflict”. The exhibition will be a step forward in creating a Living Memorial Museum in Northern Ireland, a museum that acknowledges the past conflict, considers its relationship to the present and provides a space “to imagine a better future.”
Núcleo Memoria Creates Ongoing Dialogue with Monthly Youth Program at Memorial de la Resistencia. (Brazil)
“Sabados Resistentes” (“Resisting Saturdays”), is a dialogue program of Núcleo de Preservação da Memória Política (Núcleo Memoria) that uses lectures, theater performances and documentaries to lead young people into debate and discussion about the history of the dictatorship in Brazil and how it relates to current experiences. The program takes place at Memorial de Resistencia de Sao Paulo (Memorial of the Resistance in Sao Paolo)- housed in the old headquarters of San Paulo’s State Department of Political and Social Order of the State – and uses the politically charged history of the site to open dialogue on issues like state terrorism and torture. 
Supported by the Coalition’s Project Support Fund”, Núcleo Memoria will now expand this program, organizing “Sabados Resistentes” every month until June 2010. The expanded program will now invite international and national experts to share their experiences and will offer new materials to educate youth about Brazil’s dictatorship and its contemporary legacy. Núcleo Memoria is a working group of the Forum Permanente de ex presos y perseguidos políticos de Sao Paulo (Permanent Forum of Former Prisoners and Political Refugees from Sao Paulo), an institution founded to defend the interests of former political prisoners during the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985). Through human rights and educational efforts, Núcleo Memoria aims to preserve the memory of people’s struggle against the illegal military regime that lasted 21 years in Brazil.
“Out of the Kitchen” Strengthens Dialogue at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (USA)
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum will expand opportunities for visitors to engage in open dialogue by launching “Out of the Kitchen”, a revision of the Museum’s well-known “Kitchen Conversations” dialogue program. Through tours of the restored apartments of its landmark tenement building at 97 Orchard street, home to 7,000 people from over 20 nations between 1863 and 1935, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum invites visitors to “meet” the families who lived there. Using these individual, human stories as a starting point, the Museum held “Kitchen Conversations” – a program for visitors to engage in open conversation about contemporary immigration experiences and issues. Now, through the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum will expand the “Kitchen Conversations” program to encourage open dialogue throughout a tour experience, allowing participants to draw on the emotions evoked by being in the tenement apartments and connect with contemporary immigration experiences.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum launches first educational outreach program (Cambodia)
As Cambodia hold its landmark trials to bring to justice architects of the Khmer Rouge genocide, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is launching its first educational program geared towards Cambodian secondary school students. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a former high school that was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. The buildings at Tuol Sleng are preserved as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. The Museum commemorates the millions of Cambodians who lost their lives to the Khmer Rouge, and aims to educate future generations on this history relating it contemporary human rights issues, democratic freedom and tolerance. The Museum’s new educational program, supported by the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, will bring Cambodian students weekly to the site over a ten-month period, to share the history of the Khmer Rouge genocide and engage the students in discussion about its legacies in Cambodian society today. The program seeks to provide Cambodian youth with knowledge and ways to reconcile past atrocities and promote peace and understanding in the future.
Documentary Film “La Memoria Barrial” shows neighborhood memories of State Terrorism (Mendoza, Argentina)
On November 6, 2009, La Casa por la Memoria y la Cultura Popular, (The House for Memory and Popular Culture Public Library) premiered the documentary “La Memoria Barrial” (“Neighborhood Memory”) in Mendoza, Argentina. The documentary, supported by the Coalition’s Project Support Fund, is a way for people to explore and confront their experiences of the military dictatorships, from a personal and local perspective. “La Memoria Barrial” tells the story of Hector “Flaco” Pringles, resident of Mendoza and leader of the Peronist Youth – a popular youth militancy – who was murdered in November 1975. By reconstructing his life and death, the documentary sheds light on the life and spirit of the Peronist Youth and the Mendoza community, and explores the actions of paramilitary groups and their relationship with the state. The documentary also features stories of local residents, collected through dialogue sessions. La Casa por la Memoria y la Cultura develops educational materials, about Argentina’s dictatorships, as a basis for dialogue. It works to include local experiences and memories of the dictatorships, moving beyond the history on the provincial or national level. It aims to make these stories part of public history to engage local communities in confronting and discussing their own experiences and understand how State Terrorism grew and developed in Mendoza and Argentina.
The premier of the documentary was a great success and the large turnout earned the film a spot in the first Documentary Film Festival organized by the Secretary of Culture of the Government of Mendoza. The Library also plans to present the documentary in Buenos Aires and it in its ongoing course, “Making History: Identity and Memory,” at schools and community centers.
To view the full documentary click here.
Gandhi-King Youth Conference – Memphis, United States
The National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM), located at the Lorraine Motel, the site of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, chronicles key episodes of the American Civil Rights Movement and the legacy of this movement to inspire participation in civil and human rights efforts globally, through our collections, exhibitions, and educational programs. For more information, please visit www.civilrightsmuseum.org.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting NCRM to hold the Gandhi-King Youth Conference in October 2009, and ensuring strong youth participation by providing scholarships to underprivileged students. The youth conference examines Gandhian and Kingian nonviolence through art, interactive workshops, and a dynamic plenary address. The Youth Conference will provide participants with lasting knowledge of the connections between the history of the Civil Rights Movement represented in the Museum and its connections to the current struggles for human rights.
The Youth Conference will build on a partnership with a local youth organization, BRIDGES, their local affiliate program, PeaceJam, the Mid South Peace and Justice Center, and the National Civil Rights Museum. The three organizations are partnering to develop a year-round series of programs that will keep Memphis youth engaged in Kingian nonviolent learning and training opportunities.
Mapping Sites of Memory in Peru, Lima Peru
Movimiento Ciudadano Para Que No Se Repita (PQNSR) coordinates 38 active groups (in the field of human rights, education, development, and media) in 25 regions in Peru. The PQNSR is recognized for being the most comprehensive grass-roots movement in the country and for its effective contribution to the process of truth, justice and reconciliation. For more information, please visit www.paraquenoserepita.org.pe/.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting PQNSR to launch a project to identify, register and promote memory initiatives in Peru. The project intends to promote dialogue and reflection on memory by creating opportunities for public participation; encourage the exchange of experiences among organizations working on preserving sites of memory; contribute in the transmission of memory in the most affected areas during the internal conflict; and encourage the Government to support and preserve sites of memory throughout the country.
Pilorama 2009 – Forum for Civic Engagement Art – Perm, Russia
The Gulag Museum at Perm-36 is dedicated to promoting democratic values and civil consciousness in contemporary Russian society through the preservation of the last Soviet political camp as a vivid reminder of repression, and an important historical and cultural monument.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting the Gulag Museum at Perm-36 to hold a groundbreaking art and music forum to engage audiences in dialogue on the theme of “Art and Civic Responsibility” in Russia. The project will use the Gulag Museum at Perm-36’s imposing barracks and guard towers to connect the history of the camp with issues of civic responsibility in Russia today. The forum will feature musical, theatrical, and literary performances by national and international artists exploring contemporary civic issues. Audiences will engage in dialogue on these issues on a variety of levels, from post-performance discussions to creating installations and other art-making on democracy and human rights issues.
Educational Guided Visits and Workshop on Citizen Dialogue: Reflections with Youth on Discrimination – Santiago, Chile
Founded in 1996, Corporación Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi (Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace Corporation) strives to preserve the historical memory of Villa Grimaldi and other centers of torture and detention; to promote a culture of human rights; to develop programs and activities to achieve the above goals; and to manage, conserve and promote the Parque de la Paz (Park for Peace) for the benefit of the community of Peñalolén. For more information, please visit www.villagrimaldicorp.cl
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting Corporacion Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi to offer new educational guided visits that integrate interactive workshops to promote reflection and discussion on topics related to the promotion, dissemination and protection of human rights. The workshops will be geared towards high school students and will be developed to generate debate on issues of discrimination, one of the most current pressing issues in Chilean society. With this project, Corporacion Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi aims to strengthen the collaboration with teachers and students and integrate Villa Grimaldi’s educational programs into the schools’ curricula.
Connecting past, present and future to foster integrated communities – Sophiatown, South Africa
Established in 1999, the Huddleston Centre carries the name of activist and anti-apartheid veteran, Trevor Huddleston. The Centre draws inspiration from the experiences and hopes of the ‘new’ South Africa and the heritage of ‘old’ Sophiatown. The Huddleston Centre’s mission is to establish Sophiatown today as a place where diversity and humanitarian values (a culture of humanity) can be experienced positively, where through encounters with others, understanding, and action the values underpinning the Constitution can be enhanced.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting the Trevor Huddleston Centre to launch a multi-faceted project that aims to enable people across the social spectrum in South Africa, as well as visitors to the Centre, to engage in a dialogue through stories about Sophiatown’s rich heritage, to foster a sense of connectedness, and to promote action towards greater integration, appreciation and tolerance of different cultures and viewpoints. The participants will be students (ages 18-30) from a range of different backgrounds, who are currently unemployed, youth, who have been identified for their leadership qualities to facilitate the workshops, and elders who were firsthand witnesses to the Sophiatown story in the 1950s.
Dialogues on Inter-Religious Harmony and Tolerance – Jamalpur Gandhi Ashram, Bangladesh
The Jamalpur Gandhi Ashram (the Ashram), a historic site marked by a past of repeated resistance to its mission to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence and non-cooperation movement, represents Bangladesh’s long anti-colonial struggle in the 20th century. The Ashram is in the midst of a rebirth period, with help from local community members and the international community, to work toward the establishment of ideals of peace, non-violence, tolerance, equality and humanity.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting the Jamalpur Ganhi Ashram in launching a multifaceted project to raise awareness of religious and ethnic harmony, secularism, pluralism, tolerance and human rights, to engage participants in stimulating dialogues on religious and ethnic harmony, tolerance, equality, and human rights, and to promote peaceful co-existence among different religious communities and ethnic groups in Bangladesh. Religious and ethnic leaders of different religious and ethnic groups, community leaders of rural and urban areas, teachers and students, journalists, cultural activists, human rights activists, lawyers, peoples’ representatives and development activists will participate in the project’s various activities.
Addressing Caricatures and Stereotypes of Immigration – San Diego, United States
Opened to the public on June 20 2008, the New Americans Museum is housed in San Diego’s historic Naval Training Center (NTC). NTC closed in 1997 after 70 years as a military base and currently functions as a cultural and business centre in the city. Within this historic space, the New Americans Museum provides inspiring educational and cultural programmes and activities around San Diego’s diverse immigrant experiences and aims to be a catalyst to celebrate America’s past and promise.
Located on the border of the United States and Mexico and sharing a bi-national metropolitan area, San Diego has been home to some of the most aggressive anti-immigrant groups in the U.S. during the past few years, and is an example of the wave of anti-immigrant propaganda sweeping the country.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund supports the New Americans Museum in developing and implementing a dialogue programme that engages high school students in conversations about immigration issues in their community. With this programme the New Americans Museum hopes to address misconceptions of immigration and combat negative stereotypes and anti-immigrant propaganda in San Diego.
The Project will invite four to eight high school classes (grades 9th through 12th) to two concurrent exhibitions, Immigration and Caricature: Ethnic Images from the Appel Collection and A Community Between Two Worlds: Arab-Americans in Greater Detroit. After visiting these exhibits the students will discuss images and caricatures of immigrants in the past and explore their own assumptions and stereotypes of immigrants today. Working with schools in areas known for their diverse student populations, the programme will reach out to different ethnic and racial groups in order to build dialogue across difference and provide participants with a more comprehensive picture of immigration in San Diego informed by individuals’ experiences and encounters with each other.
Shaping a Comprehensive Story of Historical and Contemporary Immigration Experiences – Chicago, United States
The Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA) is a consortium of 25 community-based ethnic museums, cultural centres, and historical societies in Chicago, USA. CCA seeks to effect social change and public understanding of cultural diversity through the first voice perspective of community members. By leveraging partnerships between member organizations and major institutions, CAA increases the visibility and impact of Chicago’s ethnic assets.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund supports CCA’s pilot programme aimed at developing immigration dialogue programmes in four community-based ethnic museums and cultural centres in metropolitan Chicago: the Cambodian American Heritage Museum & Killing Fields Memorial (CAHM), the Polish Museum of America (PMA), the Swedish American Museum Center (SAMAC), and the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society (CJAHS).
During this pilot programme, each institution will receive training on dialogue facilitation and then bring together community members with historical and contemporary experiences of and different perspectives on immigration. Through these community dialogue sessions CCA hopes to learn how to best engage the public in dialogue and will incorporate their learning into concrete methodologies and formats for productive dialogue. The resulting dialogue programme design will be implemented at the four participating institutions, and will serve as a model for all CCA member organizations.
Ultimately, the pilot will lead to dialogue programmes at all CCA member organizations, with the goal of shaping a more comprehensive understanding of the multiple waves of immigration and exploring how previous immigrants’ experiences compare with immigration issues in Chicago today.
Engaging the Process of Reconciliation, Forgiveness and Peaceful Co-Existence – Freetown, Sierra Leone
Established in 1996, Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) is one of Sierra Leone’s oldest local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Through advocacy, capacity building, and civic education, CGG aims to increase citizens’ participation in governance in order to build a more democratic state with a well informed civil population.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund supports CGG’s multifaceted programme engaging people from different political, social, and cultural backgrounds in Sierra Leone in constructive dialogue on peace, forgiveness, reconciliation and matters of regional divide. Reconciliation remains a challenge in Sierra Leone. Nine years of civil war left tens of thousands people dead and more than 2 million Sierra Leoneans displaced. Issues linked to causing the conflict in 1991, such as discrimination, marginalization and regional tensions linger in society today. As part of a broader national effort to consolidate peace, strengthen democracy and foster reconciliation among Sierra Leoneans, CGG’s programme seeks to follow up on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations on symbolic reparations and promote reconciliation and peaceful coexistence through constructive dialogue, using the power of sites of memory.
CGG will bring together civil society organizations and relevant state actors in a one-day workshop to discuss and strategize about the role of Sites of Conscience in post-conflict Sierra Leone. Following this, CGG will host a two-day dialogue with the local community around reconciliation and forgiveness at a mass grave site in the town of Gbendembu. Additionally, participants will visit the Old Fourah Bay College Building – the oldest institution in West Africa – to examine the importance of this site in the current socio-economic and political climate and share strategies on preserving, developing and interpreting the site. Dialogues at the two sites will serve as examples of how places of memory can serve as places for healing, reconciliation and building democracy.
“Memory on Air”: Radio Discussion of Sites of Conscience and their Contemporary Issues – Marzabotto, Italy
The Monte Sole Peace School works to preserve the memories of one of the biggest Nazi-Fascist massacre in Italy during WWII. On the site where 770 people were killed by Nazi SS troops it organizes education programs and summer youth camps that examine the context that made that system of terror possible, both in Monte Sole and in other places. Engaging young people in dialogue and promoting non-violent transformation of conflicts, respect for human rights and peaceful coexistence among different people and cultures, Monte Sole Peace School offers new perspective and engagement in the development of the proposed European constitution.
With help from the Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund, in November 2008 Monte Sole launched a new series titled “Memory on Air” on a call-in radio program popular with young people. The series features interviews with Coalition members and Trustees telling the stories of Sites of Conscience around the world and raising questions about the implications of their histories for issues young Italians face today. The series includes about a dozen 1-hour episodes, each focusing on the story of a different Site and a different contemporary question. After interviewing the site director about the site’s history and the contemporary questions it raises, the radio show’s host invites young people to call in or send SMS comments on those questions, or additional questions of their own. Featured Sites include the Gulag Museum at Perm-36 in Russia, Corporación Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi in Chile, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and others. Listen to the show (in Italian only) here: http://www.montesole.org/memory.html.
How Can Sites of Conscience Help Build Democracy after Conflict? – Monrovia, Liberia
Civic Initiative (CI) is a Liberian civil society organization whose focal areas in the pursuit of democracy as well as the rule of law are Transitional Justice (TJ) and Security Sector Reform (SSR).
Last year, Civic Initiative invited the Coalition to conduct a series of workshops, individual meetings, media trainings, and pilot public dialogues to identify how places of memory could serve as new spaces for Liberians to address the legacies of the country’s recent conflicts. Participants stressed the need for community spaces to support and expand the ongoing Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s process, where a broader base of people, for a longer period of time, could confront the past and have ongoing dialogues on how to move forward. As a result, CI formed a Memory Resource Group within the Civil Society Advisory Committee to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and identified three sites to develop into Sites of Conscience.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is beginning to develop its recommendations, due to be completed in 2009. With help from the Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund, CI is conducting a series of dialogues from November 2008-February 2009 in urban and rural communities across the country to identify what sites people would like to see remembered in their local communities; what kind of ongoing dialogues and activities they would like to see at those sites that would help those communities move forward and build lasting cultures of peace in the wake of conflict; and what support they need in order to develop them. These conversations will be developed into a set of concrete recommendations to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With the Coalition’s support, CI seeks to organize a conference involving all the community members who were consulted in the dialogue process, Truth Commissioners, journalists, and other stakeholders to formally present the recommendations and have them adopted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“Memoria Barrial” (Neighbourhood Memory) Documentary Film – Mendoza, Argentina
“La Casa por la Memoria y la Cultura Popular” (“House for Memory and Popular Culture”) develops educational materials, particularly about the recent military dictatorships, and uses them as the basis for dialogues they run for students of different ages in schools and community centers.
“Memorial Barrial” will be a documentary film about the local experience of state terrorism. To date, La Casa por la Memoria y la Cultura Popular has had to rely on materials about how the dictatorships developed and operated in Buenos Aires or on a provincial or national level. Yet many of those involved in the militancy of the era continue to live in their same houses in the neighborhood. This has allowed the local community to define state terrorism as something that came from the outside, in which none of them were implicated; it means that local people’s unique experiences have not been made public, and finally that local people have not been involved in remembering and confronting their own experiences.
The documentary will feature the stories of five members of the militant group Peronist Youth, together with those of local residents. To help local communities understand how state terrorism grew and developed in Mendoza, the documentary aims to reconstruct the life and death of Hector “Flaco” Pringles, a local Peronist Youth leader killed by paramilitaries in November of 1975; reconstruct the life and spirit of local popular and youth militancy of the era; and explore the actions of local paramilitary groups and their relationship to the state.
The documentary will be used as the basis for local dialogues on the local legacies of the dictatorship and how to address them, through La Casa por la Memoria y la Cultura Popular’s ongoing course, “Making History: Identity and Memory,” which it uses in workshops with Quechua and Mapuche language groups, at-risk youth, and in schools and community centers.