PHASE TWO: Description of Activities —
Seeds of Foregiveness Grantee Projects

Stephanie J. Hawkins and Lori P.S. Harris, Forgiveness through the Arts Program for Girls
The organization implemented film clips from the Love & Forgiveness campaign with social/emotional dialogues and creative arts activities. The four workshops were modeled after the four stages of the butterfly to signify personal growth—egg, developing caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly. The participants were eight girls (ages ranged from 10 to 16) who live in a home where one parent is absent.

At the end of the event, the girls were able to portray their own dramatic skills by distinguishing between anger and hate responses from love and forgiveness responses, leading to growth and insight. The girls bonded with each other by sharing personal experiences about forgiveness. They were able to articulate the importance for self-forgiveness and compassion for others in creative ways. The next step the organization will take is to create a calendar featuring the participants photographed wearing butterfly wings, symbolizing their transformation during the program. The calendar will feature words of insight and encouragement from the girls to others in the community.

Friends of the Northeast Interfaith Peace Garden, Inc.
The 15-20 participants in the program were extremely diverse, ranging in age from their mid-twenties to late-sixties. The attendees came from different racial and religious backgrounds from across the Northeast Baltimore community. The program was designed to explore aspects of forgiveness from various faith traditions and from the perspective of peacemaking in a community.

Each session, a leader from a different faith tradition spoke about their traditions’ perspectives, followed by a film clip and discussion. Participants in the conversations learned that forgiveness is a process that must be rooted deeper than just the utterance of forgiving words – it must come from a desire and drive to forgive. The organization will continue its efforts to foster forgiveness within their diverse community by planting a Garden of Forgiveness, to be formally dedicated on September 21, 2008—International Peace Day. Additionally, they are planning labyrinth walks coupled with screenings of The Power of Love, The Power of Forgiveness, and Anyone & Everyone for the greater community to attend throughout the summer.

Fusion Partnerships, Inc.
Through collaborative action, Fusion works to be a catalyst for justice and peace. They provide fiscal sponsorship and supportive capacity building for 25 grassroots and community-based social change programs. Their ten discussion participants ranged in age from forty to sixty, and were from diverse backgrounds of African American, Arab, and Caucasian heritages. At each session, participants shared a meal together that led into a discussion about the virtues of love and forgiveness and how to apply these concepts to the greater community. The group viewed all the Campaign film clips in the first session, and then collectively decided the discussion topics for the remaining sessions.

The conversations covered a range of topics, including how to apply forgiveness while striving towards justice, as well as how to forgive when oppression and transgressions continue to manifest themselves in the community. Self-forgiveness was the most difficult topic to discuss, as most sessions were particularly emotional and personally revealing. Their discussions triggered revelations beyond the typical notions of forgiveness. The organization is looking forward to producing a CD full of music about forgiveness and will distribute it within the Fusion community.

The Interfaith Fairness Coalition of Maryland
The event, hosted by an organization that looks to further education and acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people within various faith backgrounds in the Maryland region, brought together people of such backgrounds to discuss how to forgive themselves, their families, their faiths and their world. Participation at events ranged from sixteen to twenty people, who came from at least nineteen different faith congregations.

The events used discussions about love and forgiveness as an opportunity to obtain new perspective and build rapport among these people, whose diverse backgrounds may not have traditionally encouraged such fraternization. The participants were sent back to their groups with a wealth of conversation materials to use with their own constituents. The organization will look to make “Forgiveness” the central theme for its annual Interfaith Pride Service in June, where participants of these events will be invited to speak about their experiences with forgiving.

Nyame Nti Cultural Healing Arts Therapy, Inc.
Fourteen young men, residents of the Woodbourne Center (a residential treatment facility), attended the conversations, with the goal that discussions about forgiveness would be beneficial to their healing processes. The discussions utilized films from the Love & Forgiveness campaign, meditation activities, conversations, music, and journaling and poetry activities.

Despite their troubled situations, the participants expressed an enormous amount of honesty and openness. The young men in attendance learned that forgiveness comes from within, and that self-forgiveness is the first step in an on-going process. Though there was great trauma inflicted upon these men in their pasts, failure to utilize forgiveness as a mechanism to overcome the effects of such trauma can result in even further psychological damage. The Woodbourne Center looks to hold similar events in the future with even more participants, as well as to produce a book of poetry written during the event to distribute within the community.

 

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