How Nonviolent Communication is helping people from diverse communities build understanding, connection, and peace.
In a community shaped by displacement, trauma, and extraordinary cultural diversity, misunderstandings are inevitable. Different languages, customs, and histories can easily become barriers to trust. Yet amid these challenges, something is helping people discover another way of relating to one another.
Kakuma is home to people from many countries, cultures, languages, and traditions. Each person brings a unique story - of home and displacement, loss and resilience, uncertainty and hope.
For decades, Kakuma has welcomed people displaced by conflict and instability from across the region and beyond. For many, arriving in Kakuma means rebuilding daily life within a diverse community, often alongside people whose languages, customs, and experiences differ significantly from their own.
This diversity is a source of strength, but it can also present challenges. Experiences of displacement and trauma, combined with linguistic and cultural differences, can make everyday misunderstandings more difficult to navigate and, at times, contribute to tension between individuals and communities.
At the same time, Kakuma creates opportunities for people who might otherwise never have met to learn, work, play, and build relationships together.
It is within this environment that Bridges of Hope is exploring a simple but important question:
Can the way we communicate help us build bridges across our differences?
Since May 2025, Nonviolent Communication (NVC) has been introduced in Kakuma Refugee Camp as a practical tool to strengthen relationships, prevent conflict, and foster peaceful coexistence in the community home, which houses more than 500 people from different nationalities and cultural backgrounds.
Rather than focusing only on resolving disputes after they arise, the project helps participants develop the skills to prevent conflict from escalating by learning to recognize feelings, understand needs, and communicate with empathy.
Teachers sit alongside students. Parents join youth leaders. Community elders share circles with people they may never have spoken to before.
Through role plays, dialogue circles, practical exercises, and reflective conversations, participants practice replacing blame with curiosity and judgment with understanding.
On football fields across Kakuma, young people from different nationalities who once kept to their own communities now play together as teammates.
Sports have become another classroom, where empathy, cooperation, and respectful communication are practiced in real time.
“We don’t play to win against others. We play to win connection. Needs connect us. Judgments divide us.” — A message displayed on the field
In places marked by conflict, peace is often imagined as the absence of violence. Bridges of Hope offers another perspective.
Peace begins with a conversation. Sometimes, it begins with a single question: “What might we be feeling and needing right now?”
Within the community, many participants who once struggled with frequent misunderstandings now communicate more openly and respectfully.
Families, youth, and community members have developed healthier ways of resolving disagreements, leading to stronger relationships and a greater sense of unity.
“I used to think people from other communities didn’t understand us. But now I see we all cry, we all laugh, we all want love.” — Fatuma Abdullahi, Kakuma NVC Training participant
Since its launch, Bridges of Hope has conducted four NVC trainings, bringing together participants from nine refugee communities.
Bridges of Hope is currently seeking collaborators who can support:
Please get in touch with the certified trainers supporting the project:
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