A student at Tangaza College in Nairobi, Kenya, Peris Waithera Mwangi is a Muslim who participates in various activities, including the “University in the slums” initiative. Through this project, students offer different services to the people living in shantytowns. Here, we share our interview with Peris last August during her visit to the 26th International Service-Learning Conference in Buenos Aires.
-You work as a “community facilitator.” What does it mean to be a facilitator?
-When you are a facilitator, you have many feathers in your bonnet (like a chieftain). All the time, you have to do something. One moment, you are providing financial assistance, and the next, you are empowering the community; it’s like being an ambassador for peace. I come from an area of Nairobi that suffered from Al Shabab terrorism in Somalia. We are working to bring us all back together, Muslims and Christians, in the same community. These Somalis are instilling extremism in some children to take them to Somalia, and we are trying to avoid this. We can’t let them take the children.
-How do you intend to do this?
Our means is the inter-religious dialogue. We work jointly with the government and civil society organizations. That is part of the peace-building approach. We practise religious tolerance and teach them that it is wrong to mistreat someone who lives with us. We also work against gender-based violence; we don’t call those who experience it “victims” but “survivors”. We find them, take them to safe houses, and offer them lawyers who advise them for free and give them money to rebuild their lives.
What enables or facilitates this inter-religious dialogue and religious tolerance, and how to do it through service-learning?
-In my community, there are Muslims, Christians and people with African roots. We use the method we learn in Tangaza, which is based on spiritual reflection; each person considers what their religion says about how to treat others, for example. This way, we become more aware that we should care for and respect each other. Interreligious dialogue is not just a conversation but actions. We began to spread the words of peace throughout the county, collaborated with different institutions in Kenya, and worked hard to empower young people so that they would not go to Somalia, and those who were already there, we tried to bring them back. In my opinion, service-learning is not just about tangible elements but intangible matters such as psychological trauma or psychosocial support.
As students of social transformation, we have a rule: before transforming the community, you need to transform yourself first because you cannot give what you don’t have. If you want peace, you have to make and live in it.
-In your presentation at the 26th International Service-Learning Conference, you mentioned that the university brought about a change in you. How was this change?
-I thought that, to make crafts, you need clay and a kiln. Well, I was the clay, and the university was like a kiln. I entered Tangaza in one way, and they moulded me there like a pot. I came out polished, transformed, to transform the community.
-In your opinion, what was it about the university that made this possible?
-The curriculum. Before going to university, I thought I was fine, but when I entered, I realized that there were many things I didn’t know, and the curriculum made me improve. And thanks to the curriculum, you have to engage with the community. The community has the leading role. We don’t tell them what is right or what they should do. We do it with the community.
-Based on your experience, what would you tell students about service-learning?
Service-learning is the best innovation because you can learn, but that doesn’t mean you get an education. You get an education when you leave the classroom, go to the community and learn about its problems, whether they are social, political, or whatever. It prepares you to be a leader of the future, have empathy, tolerate and respect others, and make the world a better place.
