Three thou­sand full-sized “con­flict res­o­lu­tion” posters, pri­mar­i­ly de­signed for pri­ma­ry schools and ap­proved by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion was re­cent­ly hand­ed over to Dr Pe­ter Smith, CEO at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

The project led by Act to Change T&T, an NGO that was born out of the anger, sad­ness, frus­tra­tion, and hope­less­ness that en­gulfed T&T fol­low­ing the mur­der of Ashan­ti Ri­ley and just two months af­ter, An­drea Bharatt, in Jan­u­ary 2021.

Founders and the spon­sors of this poster, Na­dia Ju­man and her daugh­ter, Saman­tha, at­tend­ed a march at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in the days fol­low­ing Bharatt’s mur­der and de­cid­ed that they need­ed to do some­thing to try and make a change. Amid the ral­ly­ing on the Sa­van­nah grass, they cre­at­ed the Face­book page which served as the plat­form to ini­ti­ate a move­ment for change.

Since then, Act to Change T&T quick­ly found it­self root­ed in the bat­tle against gen­der-based vi­o­lence—col­lab­o­rat­ing with many lead­ing NGOs in the space to plan and ex­e­cute on a na­tion-wide walk on In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day in March 2021 in protest against GBV and call­ing for stronger and swifter ac­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to UNICEF, a re­cent Spot­light sur­vey in T&T on vi­o­lence against chil­dren re­vealed that such vi­o­lence is wide­spread and gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed (es­pe­cial­ly for phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al abuse).

Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion 70-75 per cent of re­spon­dents said they had seen a child hit or shoved. And 72 per cent were aware of cas­es of sex­u­al abuse against girls and 36 per cent said the same con­cern­ing boys. Ex­pe­ri­ences of vi­o­lence dur­ing child­hood can dam­age chil­dren’s phys­i­cal and men­tal health and af­fect their whole lives. Vi­o­lence can al­so af­fect ed­u­ca­tion­al out­comes and chil­dren’s po­ten­tial to lead suc­cess­ful and pros­per­ous lives.

The Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion posters, tar­gets pri­ma­ry schools and kinder­gartens and oth­er places in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres and Nalis li­braries. The aim of the posters is char­ac­ter build­ing. De­vel­oped in 1992 by Michael Joseph­son and a group of ed­u­ca­tors, The six pil­lars of char­ac­ter in­clude trust­wor­thi­ness, re­spect, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, fair­ness, car­ing and cit­i­zen­ship.

Act to Change T&T said the coun­try needs more of these val­ues in­stilled in our so­ci­ety, and these con­flict res­o­lu­tion posters em­body them as a means to a more peace­ful end. Re­cent re­search on char­ac­ter ed­u­ca­tion is be­com­ing a preva­lent top­ic amongst em­ploy­ees, in­flu­ences, po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, and even young peo­ple across the globe.

How can teach­ing this top­ic have any­thing put pos­i­tive ef­fects? What is the point of try­ing to groom Grade A stu­dents if they are full of anger, re­sent­ment, dis­re­spect, and bul­ly oth­ers? Act to Change ex­plained that the so­ci­ety needs to look at in­di­vid­ual growth in a more holis­tic man­ner and see this as part of the so­lu­tion to many of the is­sues that face T&T.

In set­ting out on this ven­ture to pro­mote pos­i­tive moral and val­ues ed­u­ca­tion among chil­dren, Act to Change said it was ex­treme­ly for­tu­nate to so­lic­it the help of Whole­Heart­ed School Coun­sel­ing, an or­gan­i­sa­tion based in the USA that cre­at­ed the poster and ap­proved it for use with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Con­sist­ing of a dozen tiles each il­lus­trat­ing a sce­nario where a child us­es a spe­cif­ic ap­proach to re­solv­ing a con­flict, which is ti­tled on each tile, the poster aims to show kids that there are non-vi­o­lent and eq­ui­table ways to solve a prob­lem they may en­counter with a friend or an adult.

With the sup­port of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the pri­vate sec­tor, the posters are in­tend­ed to be a spring­board off which di­a­logue can start be­tween kids, teach­ers, school man­age­ment, and par­ents, and serve as a re­minder for such di­a­logue to con­tin­ue around the im­por­tance of virtues ed­u­ca­tion, in the fight against vi­o­lence, dis­hon­esty, and cor­rup­tion.

As a part two to this ini­tia­tive, Act to Change wants to tar­get the sec­ondary schools us­ing a dif­fer­ent medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion more suit­able to the age group to de­liv­er the same mes­sag­ing. This road to­ward peace is very long and re­quires the col­lec­tive ac­tion of in­di­vid­u­als. While some may see it as just a poster on a wall, Act to Change sees this as a small step to­ward chang­ing the cul­ture of vi­o­lence that is wit­nessed every day in T&T.