‘We asked the children what they understand by the words radicalization, extremism and terrorism. They were not sure,’ Mariam Wambui told us. She was speaking at a meeting of the MIKA initiative – a partnership between the Muslim-inspired Minda Trust and the Christian-inspired Eleka Trust, based in Kenya’s second city, Mombasa.

‘The workshop was simply transformative! My home has totally changed for good after my husband and I took part in it. If more people are taken through this programme, Kenya will become a safe place’ said Jane, one of the 21 participants who participated in a Creators of Peace Circle in Kuresoi North constituency, Nakuru County from 22 to 24 May, 2014.

‘I feel this workshop was meant for me. I wrote a letter of forgiveness to my husband and I presented it to him. He could not believe that I had actually forgiven him and he has changed a lot since then,’ said Esther a month after she had attended a Creators of Peace (CoP) workshop for 19 participants (three being men) from 9-11 April, 2014 in Kabazi area.

The Royal Geographical Society’s Ondaatje Theatre opened its doors for the biggest London event of The Beyond Forgiving Tour on 27 May. Here to a hugely attentive, 400-strong crowd, South Africans Ginn Fourie and Letlapa Mphahlele spread their message of the transformative nature of forgiveness and apology.

The Durham event of the Beyond Forgiving tour took place in the Prior's Hall of the Cathedral on 28 May. Dr Anthony Bash, senior tutor at Hatfield College, University of Durham, welcomed the audience and the two protagonists of the film, Letlapa Mphahlele and Ginn Fourie. Following a screening of the DVD, the first person to respond was Mr Archie Sibeko, once a senior commander of the ANC and a trade union leader. Turning to Mpahlele and Fourie, he remarked on their bravery.

The award-winning documentary film Beyond Forgiving, shot in post-Apartheid South Africa, is 'hugely humbling and stirring', said Julia Deakin, poet and lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bradford in Yorkshire. She hosted an evening in Bradford, on 22 May, with the film's two protagonists, Letlapas Mphahlele and Ginn Fourie from Cape Town, attended by students at the university's Department of Peace Studies.

Ginn Fourie says that if she had met Letlapa Mphahlele within a year of her daughter’s death, she would have tried to kill him. Mphahlele as Director of Operations of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, ordered an attack on the Heidelberg Tavern in Cape Town in 1993 in retaliation for the killing of black schoolchildren by the South African army. Fourie’s daughter, Lyndi, was one of the four people killed. Yet on Sunday, 18 May, Fourie and Mphahlele were speaking together at St John’s College, Oxford, at the launching of the Beyond Forgiving tour of the UK.

Twenty years ago today – 22 May 1994 – General Joseph Lagu addressed a Moral Re-Armament Conference in Yaounde, Cameroon, under the title: ‘The struggle for justice without hatred’. His speech, strikingly relevant to today’s challenges, not only in his native South Sudan but also beyond, is reproduced in full below. Since leaving his post of Vice-President of Sudan in 1985, General Lagu has given much of his time to the reconciling work of Moral Re-Armament, now known as Initiatives of Change. This has included visits to 18 other countries.

Two Swedish newspapers, Expressen and Dagen, have reported on the work of the Imam and the Pastor in Kaduna this week. Expressen is one of the biggest newspapers in Sweden, Dagen is a Christian paper. The title of the Expressen article is 'Här lever hoppet i Boko Harams Nigeria' which means 'Here lives hope in the Nigeria of Boko Haram'.

The continuing crisis in South Sudan is a tragedy of massive proportions. An intervention is needed. We believe it can come from individuals courageous enough to move beyond sectional interests and search for the inspired response, motivated by the suffering of their fellow South Sudanese and the vision of a healed, renewed South Sudan. We appeal to leaders on both sides to show that statesmanship.