When someone hurts you or angers you, the last thing you want to do is sit and talk with them. Well, the concept of restorative justice incorporates that practice of bringing the perpetrator and the victim together to work things out and heal. Impact Justice is an organization out of Barbados that trains educators from different CARICOM countries on how to use this method in the classrooms. Today the Impact Justice team held a training for teachers, principals and education officers at the Biltmore. Here is more.
Prof. Velma Newton, Regional Director, IMPACT Justice
"What we are actually doing here and it is important because Belize is one of the 4 countries in the region that we have reached the train the trainer stage. We have 3 Belizean teachers, 2 principals and 1 teacher who are actually conducting this training under the supervision of a facilitator from the Institute of Restorative practices in Canada."
"Restorative practices is a concept, a way of thinking and the whole purpose is to bring persons who have caused harm to a stage where they accept that they caused harm and they can apologize and make some sort of restitution to the person that has been harmed."
"It is a peace building concept, yes and it works well in schools all over the world where it is 9:59 practiced."
Courtney Weatherburne, reporter
"The concept of restorative justice it is one that is productive and as you said it is a healing process but it is very difficult, I am very sure to have the perpetrator and the victim in the same room, could you describe that scenario, is it like an intervention type setting?"
Prof. Velma Newton
"Well it depends, usually the principals, like I said we focus on schools, usually the principals or teachers can get the parties together, and once they use their skills to get them together then the rest goes but of course as you were saying, you have to get them to agree and it all depends on what they are dealing with, some matters are easier, others take a bit more skill and persuasion, some parties won't come together at all and therefore you have to think of other ways with coping with the issues."
Dr. Carol Babb, Chief Education Officer, Ministry of Education
"I think this workshop is very timely especially since we are experiencing the rise of criminal activities, there is so much anger in the society, in our classrooms we are trying to be proactive so we are encouraging principals and teachers to do little scenarios where they can help students find a healing process and how we can build community and move forward."
Cecil Lazaro, Teacher, Orange Walk Technical High School
"Why I like this practice and I would really like to go full board as a teacher with it and bring it to the school, is that it looks at both aspects, it doesn't look only at the victim because many times when something happens in any situation, we are sympathetic to the victim and they get a lot of the attention and then the offender is mostly punished and left to the side, and that is where we go wrong many times even myself because we are human beings and we are touched by the situation."
"In this practice, it helps us to look at both situations that we help both the victim and the offender so that the cycle, it is a cycle that has to be broken."
It is a two day training. 30 educators are participating. Impact Justice was launched in 2014.
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