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The importance of investing in cultural adaptation
The importance of investing in cultural adaptation
The adaptation workshop was 4 days. There were 12 participants (6 men and 6 women) from Ethiopia plus an additional five artists (4 men and 1 woman).
The adaptation workshop consists of a number of smaller activities (discussions, brainstorming, prioritizing, and consensus-building around the concepts around a contextually adapted cycle of violence. Then the adaptation team writes what the concepts mean (i.e. the definition) and secondly gives an example through a real-life story explaining the concept. By the end of the adaptation workshop, the team will have developed and documented the following:
A program name & logo
Contextualized definitions and stories for the Cycle of Violence and Breaking Free
Selected and written traditional folktales that explain the breaking free concepts of truth, healing, forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation.
Context
Context
Yegarachin was implemented in Gambela, an area of Ethiopia bordering South Sudan which is largely rural area that is suffering from ethnic divisions especially between the 2 dominant tribes, the Anywak and Nuer. The main objective for Yegarachin was to build social cohesion by improving attitudes and behavior related to the local inter-ethnic conflict.
Recurrent intercommunity violent conflicts stand as the second reason for designating Itang as a special woreda. The conflicts observed in the woreda and the social instabilities resulted from the conflicts necessitated a closer supervision and interference of the Regional State. Different administrative and political decisions made before could not bring lasting solution and sustainably stop the violence. Consequently, the regional government decided to give a status of special woreda in 2004 to make the woreda directly accountable to the regional government. The decision was made with the presumption that the recurrent intercommunity violent conflicts could be managed if the woreda falls under a closer supervision of the regional government, though this could not bring the expected result to the expected level.
Culture
Culture
The Anywak and Nuer are pastoralist communities living in both South Sudan and Ethiopia. There has been several harmful community practices such as cattle raids and kidnapping of children. The environment is very difficult and the government services in the outlying areas is limited. Traditional justice systems are still enforced.
Name and logo creation
Name and logo creation
The color of peace, the cultural symbols of all the people of Ethiopia on a plate with Ethiopia in the middle. All of these things were important aspects of developing the symbolic logo. The name came out as the symbols and the concept was being developed.
Yegarachin (‘የጋራችን’) ‘in Amharic means “Its Ours”. The name was selected to symbolize a diverse, inclusive Ethiopia. In other words, Ethiopia belongs to all of us and all of us belong to Ethiopia.
Highlights
Highlights
Sample pieces of the Yegarachin curriculum
Adapting the cycle of violence
Adapting the cycle of violence
Participants review the different elements of the cycle of violence. In both the "hurting-self" and the "hurting-others" this is where one can see many everyday mental health issues being explored and explained from their own context. In many ways, this becomes a list of how people can tell when their friends, family, and neighbors are distressed and unwell. Participants explore through individual brainstorming all the different issues that they feel are a part of the painful cycle. Afterwards participants sort and group the ways people hurt themselves and others. Finally, they are ranked and prioritized. Lived experience is given space, as well as, what people observe in others in their daily lives.
The same is done for the "breaking free" element but categorized by truth-telling, forgiveness, justice, peace, and reconciliation.
Celebrating the artists
Celebrating the artists
Watercolors
Watercolors
We use illustrators and painters who use watercolors. They paint from stories and definitions from the adaptation workshop We have learned that graphic/computer-generated artwork does not have the same emotions. Involving the artist in the adaptation workshop is key.
In Ethiopia today most people do not see positive images of the "other". Instead they see violence, pain, and aggression. Thus showing Ethiopans from all walks of lives in positive, everyday and healthy practices is an important part of a strenth-based, healing-centered approach.
Some of the visuals are violent and many are distrubing. The participants who were a part of the adaptation process noted such images are a part of the truth-telling process of current day Ethiopia. They felt it necessary to include images that made them as Ethiopians uncomfortable because it documents the harsh realities of people's lived experience in the cycle of violence. They explained that the images are not re-traumaizing but instead an important part of the healing process. The participants drove the development of difficult images.
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