I was planning to kill myself... Peace Circles in Orus village, Baringo County-Kenya

The leadership of Creators of Peace Kenya was taken over by two amazing, very able, passionate and committed peace practitioners, namely,; Mediatrix Masava as the National Coordinator and Mumbi Wambugu as the Assistant Coordinator. With the two ladies having other engagements in a bid to sustain themselves financially, it calls for courage, sacrifice and the love of peace to accept whole heartedly to be at the forefront of Creators of Peace Kenya. The two were given the blessings and the responsibility to take the Creators of Peace programme to the next level.

Creators of Peace was called to provide training to nine volunteers in their early twenties, from the 1st – 3rd June 2016. We were requested to capacitate and nurture them in mentoring by first understanding themselves and what they can give the juniors and their peers they train and care for during camps and at the youth club.

The Africa Coordination Group (ACG) calls for nomination of new team members to serve on the Africa Coordination Group. This is also a notice of the forthcoming All Africa IofC Consultation that will take place from the 16 - 19 March 2017 in Cameroon.

Creators of Peace has conducted one-day follow-up workshops for those who have been through a Peace Circle. These workshops all took place in the month of July and were for, Nehemiah Restoration Home, PUSH (Push Until Something Happens), and the Noordgesig community. The purpose of the follow-up is to review how participants have been since they experienced the Peace Circles, how to support each other further into the new lifestyle and offer further training on topics they wanted to explore. We managed to reach 49 participants.

The CoPC facilitators were honoured to be in the presence of very patient women who sacrificed being away from their families early enough just to wait for them. The area chief was also very supportive. In total there were 17 women and 3 men- who were all Chiefs.

'End of Thinking Capacity' is the name that has been given to Kapturo village in North Baringo County- Kenya. This area was the venue of a three-day Creators of Peace Circle that took place from the 6-8 July 2016. The Peace Circle brought together a group of twenty women; ten from the Pokot and ten from the Tugen communities. This was necessitated by the fact that the area is at the border of the Tugen and Pokot communities that have a history of not seeing eye to eye. Besides the twenty women, three men also attended the Peace Circle training. This training was part of the ongoing Baringo Peace Project that was launched in October of 2015, as part of the Creators of Peace (CoP)-Kenya’s effort in bringing sustainable peace in this volatile County.

A new collaboration has merged between the Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), PUSH, which stands for 'Push Until Something Happens' and the Creators of Peace (CoP) team in South Africa. For three weeks in May, the CoP team facilitated the Creators of Peace Circle for volunteers of PUSH with an expectation that it would help nourish and revive the spirit of service and care in the volunteers and further be reflected in the communities they work in.

The call to CoP was to facilitate a Peace Circle (PC) for 15 men, between the ages of 17 and 44 years from 6th - 8th June. They came from different Coloured (mixed race) communities in and around Soweto. The hope was that the PC could support their recovery and healing journey also equip them with methods and tools to grow spiritually and to walk the talk.

At our Annual General Meeting held at Caux on Sunday 7th August 2016, the following women were elected to share leadership and responsibility for the strategic direction, governance and administration of Creators of Peace.