Title of Project: The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report Awareness App Country where project took place: Sponsoring College: International House New York Leader name: Daria Dudenkova Home country: Russian Federation College/university; Teachers College Associated project blog or website: https://verdadentucorreo.com

Section I: b. A two-sentence summary of the goals of your project The project Verdad y Reconciliación en tu Correo seeks to bring the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report to the new generation of . For Peruvian society to achieve peace, unity and reconciliation, it is imperative for the new generations to learn from the mistakes of the past and to know the truth of years of violence. c. Did other fund-raising efforts contribute to your project? What were they? No. The project was entirely funded by Davis Peace only. d. How did you come up with the idea for your project? Originally, the idea came up to me in the discussions that residents at Ihouse have in the dining room. There, some of my Peruvian friends commented about the years of violence that Peru suffered in the 1980s. They were very passionate about it and also mentioned how disappointed they felt about how their government deals with the issue. After some of these discussions, I decided to investigate a little bit about the subject and I found out about the horror stories told by witnesses and survivors of the years of violence. I couldn’t just ignore this subject anymore, so I that’s when I decided to look at the subject from the point of view of transitional justice and education. For that, I received plenty of help and information from my Peruvian friends at Ihouse. The idea of this project was born when I realized that many of the Peruvians I met outside Ihouse weren’t aware of the details of the years of violence. They just knew some generalities. My Peruvian friends also told me that they were not taught about the subject when they were at school. That made me think about how the new generation of Peruvians are dealing with the subject.

e. Why do you think the issue your project is responding to exists? The issue that this project is responding to exists nowadays. Here I mentioned a couple of the problems. First, the majority of congressmen in Peru are from the Fuerza Popular party, which has Keiko Fujimori as a leader. She is the daughter of , former who was convicted for committing crimes against humanity by being the mastermind behind the arbitrary executions committed by the military in the years of violence. The fact that Peruvians have elected so many “Fujimoristas” into congress is very telling about the lack of information, or the misinformation that Peruvians have regarding the state terrorism led by Fujimori in the 1990s. All the relevant information that Peruvians need is contained in the Final Report from the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but unfortunately it isn’t useful if nobody is reading it. Second, Peru has a museum in called Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion (LUM) which is an exhibition that shows the conflict between terrorist groups and Peru's government in the years of conflict. The museum, which is managed by the Ministry of Culture, tells the truth as researched by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Nevertheless, on June 2018, the Peruvian Congress, with a Fujimorista majority, announced the construction of a thematic park for the memory of the victims of terrorism in Lima. According to the President of the Congress, , the park “is going to tell the real history of this country.” Galarreta also denied that the park would be similar to the LUM because according to him the LUM “is based on the Report of the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation which is a parcialized report that didn’t take into account the opinion of the military forces involved in the conflict”. As it can be seen, the the issue that this project responds to is very much alive. The new Peruvian generation deserves to know what really happened in the years of violence. The truth was already researched and compiled by the Peruvian Commission of Truth and reconciliation, it only needs to reach younger Peruvians so they take informed decisions in the future.

f. Why did you choose your host site to work in? I was lucky to learn that some Ihouse residents studying in SIPA were working on a project educating kids about EdTech in rural areas of Peru around Cusco region. They allowed me to join them in their trips to schools to talk to teachers and students and get understanding of available technology and curriculum around the events revealed in the The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. g. What was it like to work in your host site? By visiting those schools and talking to the teachers I learned that some bigger events(about 20% of all things that happened) are covered in history classes but most are not. The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report is barely mentioned at all. Therefore I believe it is my mission to present as much of it as possible to the kids through this project. Regarding the technology: I've discovered that kids actively use mobile phones, but in off-line mode. Data is pretty expensive and they usually use home or public wifi to check news or play games. That made me realize that an app might not be the best mean to deliver the content to them, since it would be very data - heavy. I came across a great project called 1917Digital (https://1917resources.aseees.hcommons.org/). It was developed for 100 year anniversary of 1917 revolution in Russia. It would gather the materials about key dates in the revolution and send newsletters to subscribed readers that would tell them about the events that happened 100 years ago on that day. I believe that would be the best way to educate kids about The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report in the most low- tech way.

h. Did you feel at any point that the project was not going to work? In what ways? Originally the plan was to populate the platform with video resources (interviews with survivors, human rights advocates, witnesses of those events), but that turned out to be impossible: we have visited "Defensoria del Pueblo" “Advocates for Human Rights,” The Ministry of Culture, and the “Paz y Esperanza” (Peace and Hope) and learned that they won't be be able to assist us since they would need the approval of the the main organs of the government, which would take an enormous amount of time to give them permission to participate in a project with such a delicate subject matter. According to them, bureaucracy was against us. They have also mentioned that the governmental organs would require us to send them the finished project to evaluate if they agree for it to be published.

i. What were the challenges you encountered in communicating with people? Language barrier was the hardest thing for me to overcome during the project. My spanish is very basic and works best with google translate assistance. I had to ask for support, translation and to speak slower all the time. I would lie though if I claimed that that was troublesome for me, because Peruvian people are absolutely the nicest of all - the patience and kindness they treated me with is really indescribable.

j. How do you define peace? For me as a Russian the notion of peace comes from Leo Tolstoy’s “The War and the Peace”. While peace is classically interpreted in terms of harmony and the absence of hostility, the novel presents it in a more time spatial continuum. In short, the characters are left on the ruins of 1812 Russian war with Napoleon and have to come to terms with that had happened. Unless they do they will never feel that harmony that every human being craves for. We learn that in order to achieve that they don’t need to forgive France, but to accept what happened and move on. For me naturally that is the top of the “maslow” pyramide in regards to peace.

k. How does or will your project contribute to peace? Short-term? Long-term? In the short term, the project is designed to easily engage students and young Peruvians regarding the years of violence of the 1980s and 1990s. The goal here is to spark interest in young students so they can continue their own research and get more informed and knowledgeable about the history of their country. In the long term, the objective is to help to educate and inform younger Peruvians so they can take informed political decisions when adults. These decisions include not voting for candidates that deny the crimes committed by the military, Alberto Fujimori and his subordinates in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, and to protest any attempt by the government to distort the truth (such as the thematic park project of the Peruvian Congress.) l. Has your project changed the way you think about the world? How has it changed you? Even with the issues I encountered due to the sensitivity of the topic I was dealing with, such as bureaucracy and unwillingness to communicate, my ultimate impression of peruvian people was impeccable. Those are the sunniest, sweetest and kindest people I’ve ever encountered in my life. Talking to people and reading the reports about those bloody criminal events I got more and more horrified of what they had been through. The magical thing is, I believe, that they managed to keep the god spirit in their hearts. I grew up in Russia, lived in China, the USA and Hungary and I’ve noticed that some nations really cling on bad events - wars, conquers, conflicts, that happened to them and that leaves them very bitter. They constantly blame the world for such outcome: “Oh, we used to be so happy when we were such and such”. Nobody should forget their history but we have to move on and accept it. m. Please provide a 1-2 personal statement sentence, suitable for use as a quotation, addressing how and why this project was valuable and what was the most important thing you learned as a result. Indicate the student’s name (yours or your teammate’s) for quote attribution.

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it". For Peruvian society to achieve peace, unity and reconciliation, it is imperative for the new generations to learn from the mistakes of the past and to know the truth of years of violence. The project Verdad y Reconciliación en tu Correo seeks to bring the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report to the new generation of Peruvians.

Section II: Photographs