Healing and Rebuilding our Communities (HROC)
Musanze and Karongi districts, Rwanda

Glen Williams

Healing and Rebuilding our Communities (HROC) is a Quaker initiative developed in Rwanda and Burundi, based on principles such as:

• In every person there is something good.
• Both victims and perpetrators of violence can experience trauma and its after-effects.
• Healing from trauma requires that a person’s inner good and wisdom is sought and shared with others. It is through this effort that trust begins to be restored.

For several years now, Oxford Friends have provided financial support to enable Rwandan Quakers to organise training workshops addressing issues such as HIV/AIDS and supporting women and girls who have suffered mistreatment by their male sexual partners and discrimination within their communities. At the root of these issues, however, are the attitudes, values and behaviour of men.

HROC Rwanda now hopes to organise three training workshops for men, focussing on their harmful attitudes and behaviour towards women. Two three-day workshops would involve a total of 36 adult married men, and one one-day workshop would involve 18 young, unmarried men. Specific attention would be paid to enabling the participants to examine their attitudes and behaviour with regard to women, and supporting them in changing these for the better. Some of the topics to be addressed, for example, are “What wives wish their husbands understood about women”, “Forgiveness, second chances and free choice”, “Consequences of sexual relations outside of marriage”, “Violence within the family”, and “Harmony and peace within the family”.

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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 515 • March 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
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