In September of 2015 I started working on an eight week project that I titled “The Community Peace Dialogue” basically to get the community to discuss and come to a conclusion on what we can do to decrease the violence rate in our neighborhood. I went door-to-door from Plymouth & Bartlett to Plymouth & Magnolia interviewing residents on exactly what there ideas were regarding there knowledge of the amount of safety around them.
The purpose of me interviewing 20+ different people with the same questions was to have them meet at the Gandhi institute and discuss.
On the day of my presentation many people felt like they didn’t trust that their appearance would make a change therefore they did not come at all. Their differences and similarities was something that I personally was fascinated by– sort of like a hunger for change; therefore I didn’t give up, I presented this project to the board of the Gandhi institute in November of 2015 . It turned out that the board and I just happened to be working on the same project at the same time. Some of the board members and I decided to partner which we came Together as the C.E.P team (Community engagement project) which included Kristin Hocker, Barb van Kerkhove, Veronica Howard and Audrey Sample . For about 3 months we have been meeting and doing homework on conflict. I really wanted to see what caused violence in the community from their perspective. I grew up here and I know from experience that fear causes violence and in many other situations retaliation. This 8 week project has grown but is still in the process. Now I cant wait until the real final conclusion–I hope it creates some substantial progress!
by Hoody Miller
