 | This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it . Please introduce links to this page from related articles ; try the Find link tool for suggestions. (October 2024) |
John Caulker | |
|---|---|
| Born | 28 November 1970 Sierra Leone |
| Nationality | Sierra Leonean |
| Occupation(s) | Executive Director and Founder of Fambul Tok International |
| Known for | Activism |
John Caulker (28 November 1970) is a Sierra Leonean political and social activist. He has founded several important nongovernmental organizations.
Caulker was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone. [1] Before the Sierra Leonean Civil War (1991–2002) started, Caulker lived with his mother there. [1] Caulker and his family fled from Songo in 1995 because the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) had reached Songo. [1] Caulker became an activist in the early 1990s, around the same time as the war started. [2]
He was a MSC Criminal Justice Student at University of Leicester UK in 2005 and 2006.
In the mid 1990s, Caulker founded the Forum of Conscience. [3] He would dress in jeans and long T-shirts and enter rebel camps to interview the fighters and record their wartime stories. [1] Afterwards, risking his life, John would provide information to Amnesty International to ensure that peoples outside of Sierra Leone could differentiate gossip from facts. [1]
Caulker was then a senior fellow at Catalyst for Peace from its inception in 2003 by Elisabeth Hoffman. It was created to help everyday citizens impact their communities. [4] This organization helped him realize his mission to help communities in Sierra Leone affected by the civil war by setting up his own NGO. [4]
In 2007, he founded a nongovernmental organization in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to promote peace in post-civil war Sierra Leone through storytelling. [5] [1] It is called Fambul Tok (Krio for "Family Talk") and he is its executive director. [2]
A documentary was made in 2011 about the organization. [6]
A United Nations-special backed court spent over US$300 million attempting to prosecute some of the war criminals in the Sierra Leonean Civil War. Caulker believed this to be a misuse of funds and decided to set up an organization that would do more to help the everyday person heal from the wounds of the war. [7]
Many former soldiers, some of whom committed serious crimes against their neighbors and neighbors's families, still live in villages in Sierra Leone. [1] Sometimes, former Civil war rebels live beside the very people whom they abused. [1] Caulker believed that reviving the precolonial Sierra Leonean tradition of gathering and telling stories could enhance the sense of community in such villages and repair some of the broken relations. [1]
Fambul Tok centers the idea of solving problems through community building and restorative justice, as opposed to the Western ideals of crime and punishment. [8] The program relies on a diverse array of support ranging from village chiefs to war victims. [8] The organization's method is travelling across Sierra Leone to such villages. [1] Caulker or a staff member begins the process by listening to the community and guiding them to find their own truths. [8] They create an environment that promotes truthful storytelling and transparency and encourage 100% community participation. then they have the perpetrators and victims tell their stories. They then ask perpetrators to choose whether they will ask for forgiveness and victims to choose whether they will give forgiveness. [7] The following day, they host a ceremony in which the participants sacrifice an animal (usually a goal or fowl). [7] Finally, the community circles around a self-designated peace tree which acts as a permanent spot at which people resolve their disputes. [7]
They worked in tandem with the Truth and Reconciliation Working Group (TRWG), a body of Sierra Leonean NGOs that aim to preserve factual storytelling, history in particular, and prevent alternative versions of facts from being publicized. [9] This was to prevent Sierra Leoneans from interpreting history in a way that might encourage future conflicts. [9]
In 2010, after submitting a trailer detailing the organization's mission, the film Fambul Tok won the first place prize at the My Hero Film Festival, which looks to promote awareness of local issues as a way to create positive change in the world. [10] [11]
Catalyst for Peace provides assistance, not only acting as an outside overseer to provide funding, but also committing staff members and expertise to contribute to Fambul Tok's mission. [7] This partnership is an "emergent design" for development. [7]
Fambul Tok also did work around the Ebola outbreak. In 2014, Fambul Tok International partnered with nine national NGOs and thirty local community based organizations to form the Bridging Communities Network (BCN), created by Caulker on 26 November 2014 in Port Loko District, Sierra Leone. Its aim was to create a countrywide, local response against the Ebola outbreak. [12]
Caulker and the Fambul Tok staff attempted to educate locals about how to prevent the spread of Ebola. This required full community cooperation, from the staff to the chiefs to the people. [13] The virus affected many families in Sierra Leone, in particular creating many orphans. [14] Due to the belief that a village raises a child, Fambul Tok encouraged orphans to remain in their original communities should their parents pass away. [14]
In advocating for more local involvement as opposed to international involvement in the fight against Ebola, Caulker asked the NGOs to facilitate community building and mobilize social capital to further educate people on how to mitigate the outbreak. [12] Many participants in the network, specifically those who had relatives who had died from Ebola, were helped to have better access to pertinent health-related information. [12] They were thus given cell phones which enabled them to contact high-ranking personnel in the Bridging Communities Network. [12] At the end of 2014, formal consultations had been conducted in Moyamba, Koinadugu, and Kailahun districts. [12]
The Inter District Learning and Sharing Conferences took place from 10 to 12 November 2016. [15] The conference aimed to create a more community-centered approach to governance where the government would include popular opinions in policy making. [15] The meetings took place in Moyamba, Kailahun, and Koinadugu districts. [15] Building on the foundation he created through the Bridging Communities Network (BCN), Caulker worked with the community and policymakers on how to build sustainable, forward-looking policies to encourage local and national scale development. [15]
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Its land area is 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi). It has a tropical climate and environments ranging from savannas to rainforests. As of the 2023 census, Sierra Leone has a population of 8,908,040. Freetown is both its capital and its largest city. The country is divided into five administrative regions, which are further subdivided into 16 districts.
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was a Sierra Leonean politician who served twice as the 3rd President of Sierra Leone, from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2007. An economist and attorney by profession, Kabbah spent many years working for the United Nations Development Programme. He retired from the United Nations and returned to Sierra Leone in 1992.
The Mende are one of the two largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone; their neighbours, the Temne people, constitute the largest ethnic group at 35.5% of the total population, which is slightly larger than the Mende at 31.2%. The Mende are predominantly found in the Southern Province and the Eastern Province. The Mende are mostly farmers and hunters. Some of the major cities with significant Mende populations include Bo, Kenema, Kailahun, and Moyamba.
Bombali is a district in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. Its capital and largest city is Makeni, which is also the largest city in the north. The Bombali district is one of the sixteen districts of Sierra Leone. Bombali is one of the largest districts in Sierra Leone by geographical area, after Koinadugu District, and is the second most populous district in the Northern part of Sierra Leone, after Port Loko district. In the 2015 Sierra Leone national census, the population of Bombali District was 606,183. Other major towns in Bombali District include Kamabai, Karina and Binkolo.
The Civil Defense Forces (CDF) was a paramilitary organization that fought in the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002). It supported the elected government of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah against the rebel groups Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). Much of the CDF was made up of the Kamajors group, which is part of the larger Mende ethnic group. The Kamajors believed in many magical ways of defending themselves, such as rituals to create bulletproof skin.
Njala University (NU) is a public university located in Njala and Bo, Sierra Leone. It is the second largest university in Sierra Leone. The largest and main campus of Njala University is in Njala, Moyamba District; the other campus is Bo, the second largest city in Sierra Leone.
Mass media in Sierra Leone began when the first modern printing press in Africa arrived at the start of the 19th century. In the 1860s the country became a journalist hub for Africa with professional travelling to the country from across the continent. At the end of the 19th century the industry went into decline and when radio was introduced in the 1930s this became the primary communication media. Print media is not widely read in Sierra Leone, especially outside Freetown, partially due to the low levels of literacy in the country. In 2008 there were 15 daily newspapers in addition to those published weekly. Among newspaper readership young people are likely to read newspapers weekly and older people daily. The majority of newspapers are privately run and are often critical of the government.
Paramount Chief Ella Koblo Gulama OBE, GCOR was a Sierra Leonean paramount chief and politician. In 1957, she became the first elected female Member of Parliament in Sierra Leone. She was re-elected in 1962. During the government of Milton Margai, Gulama became Sierra Leone and sub-Saharan Africa's first female Cabinet Minister.
Julius Momoh Gulama was a Sierra Leonean King, statesman and educator in the pre-independence era. As King of Kaiyamba Chiefdom, he ruled the largest and most powerful Mende chiefdom in the Sierra Leone.
Education in Sierra Leone is legally required for all children for six years at primary level and three years in junior secondary education, but a shortage of schools and teachers has made implementation impossible. The Sierra Leone Civil War resulted in the destruction of 1,270 primary schools and in 2001 67 percent of all school-age children were out of school. The situation has improved considerably since then with primary school enrollment doubling between 2001 and 2005 and the reconstruction of many schools since the end of the war. However, there is still a long ways to go. In 2004, Junior secondary school enrollment was only 17% of primary school enrollment, and senior secondary school enrollment was only 8% of primary school education.
Mandingo people of Sierra Leone is a major Muslim ethnic group in Sierra Leone and a branch of the Mandinka people of West Africa. The Mandingo first settled in Northeast in what is now Sierra Leone from Guinea over 650 years ago as farmers, traders and Islamic clerics in the time of the Mali Empie, an Islamic Empire under the rule of the famous Muslim ruler Mansa Musa. About 500 years later, Beginning in the late 1870s to the 1890s under the rule of prominent Mandinka Muslim cleric Samori Ture, an even larger group of Mandingo immigrated from Eastern Guinea settled in northeastern Sierra Leone on lands conqured by the Muslim ruler Samori Toure as part of the Wassoulou Empire, a Muslim Empire. The Mandingo are partly responsible for the spread of Islam in Sierra Leone. The Mandingo people of Sierra Leone have a very close friendly and allied relationship with their neighbors the Mandingo people of Guinea and Liberia, as they share very similar identical dialect of the Mandingo language, tradition, culture and food.
University of Makeni is the first private, Catholic, university located in Makeni, Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone is officially a secular state, although Islam and Christianity are the two main and dominant religions in the country. The Sierra Leone Government is constitutionally forbidden from establishing a state religion, though Muslim and Christian prayers are usually held in the country at the beginning of major political occasions, including presidential inauguration.
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a Constitutional Republic in West Africa. Since it was founded in 1792, the women in Sierra Leone have been a major influence in the political and economic development of the nation.
Literature of Sierra Leone is the collection of written and spoken work, mostly fictional, from Sierra Leone. The coastal west-African country suffered a civil war from 1991 until 2002. Before the civil war, Sierra Leone had many writers contributing to its literature and since the end of the war the country has been in the process of rebuilding this literature. This is an overview of some important aspects of the literature of Sierra Leone before, during, and after the war.
Fambul Tok is a 2011 American documentary film about an organization that aims at reconciliation and forgiveness in communities that were affected by a long-running civil war in Sierra Leone. The film was directed by journalist Sara Terry and it premiered at the South by Southwest film festival. The title of the film is the organization's name, which translates to "family talk" in the Krio language. The film has received mixed reviews from critics. An epilogue to the film documented the community's reconciliation process with one of the major perpetrators of violence during the war.
Healthcare in Sierra Leone is generally charged for and is provided by a mixture of government, private and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). There are over 100 NGOs operating in the health care sector in Sierra Leone. The Ministry of Health and Sanitation is responsible for organizing health care and after the end of the civil war the ministry changed to a decentralized structure of health provision to try to increase its coverage.
An Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone occurred in 2014, along with the neighbouring countries of Guinea and Liberia. At the time it was discovered, it was thought that Ebola virus was not endemic to Sierra Leone or to the West African region and that the epidemic represented the first time the virus was discovered there. However, US researchers pointed to lab samples used for Lassa fever testing to suggest that Ebola had been in Sierra Leone as early as 2006.
Sierra Leone is home to around sixteen ethnic groups, each with its own language. In Sierra Leone, membership of an ethnic group often overlaps with a shared religious identity. According to the 2004 census Temne is the largest ethnic group in Sierra Leone.
The following lists events that happened during 2014 in Sierra Leone.