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| Peace: Stellamaris Mualeh helps fellow Kenyans resolve conflict. Courtesy of Religions for peace |
How one young Kenyan helps heal her divided country
Stellamaris Mulaeh organizes dialogues and service projects as alternatives to violence.
from the April 16, 2008 edition
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Reporter Jill Carroll talks about a young Kenyan trying to resolve conflict and bring peace to her country.
Mulaeh's various roles as a youth leader "came to a dramatic test in the recent events in Kenya," says William Vendley, secretary general of the WCRP. "She grasped, as a youth on the scene would, that it was youth from all communities and tribes" involved in the violence, which also made them "extraordinarily positioned to take steps" to halt it.
With "stunning speed of action," they did, adds Mr. Vendley. "So much quicker and more nimble than other actors."
Young people are a key force in driving much of the violence in Kenya, says Jacqueline Klopp, a professor at Columbia University. But, she notes that youth groups across the country also mobilized to stop it and will be key to preventing it.
"Just because there is an agreement and cabinet now does not mean this hard work on the ground has even started," Ms. Klopp adds. "I think everyone now is saying we have to do so much more and so much faster.... Now everyone is saying we need to invest in youth."
Some of the worst violence occurred in the Kibera slum, a flash point for ethnic clashes. The violence there had kept delivery trucks away; food had run out. So Mulaeh asked friends from her peace-building program for packets of maize flour and wound up with stacks of it.
"Before I left home [to deliver the food], my mother told me, 'Can you write down your will?' " she recalls.
Once in Kibera, youths from the mentoring program helped her unload the food. Mulaeh marveled that their section of the slum was an oasis of peace. After delivering the food, the diverse group gathered to talk. The program leader had urged unity from the first moments of the conflict, setting a tone that had sustained them even as friends died.
"They were sitting around from different communities" and talking about their views at a time when "it was just scandalous to see somebody from another community!" she recalls. "They were a story of hope for me that at least a some young people can choose to behave differently."
She went on to tap her vast network of contacts to hold a youth meeting to find a way to help the crisis. Six weeks after the elections, curfews were still in place. But some 120 young people turned up. They agreed to provide aid to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in camps, and to start a publicity campaign acknowledging the role youths played in the violence and calling for unity. Now she wants to hold a summer conference to promote further reconciliation. "I need to work more because right now the situation is desperate," she says.-
[Editor's note: The original version misspelled Stellamaris Mulaeh's last name.]
• For more information, contact World Conference of Religions for Peace (www.wcrp.org) or Pax Romana (www.paxromana.org).1 | Page 2
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