APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 111 How Tree of Life Is Taking Root in Zimbabwe 111 currently no money for residential workshops—which would be crucial for enabling the safe participation of perpetrators—there would be some available soon. The Big Tree of Life could therefore begin making plans. The next steps would be devised by people from within the community—people who themselves had experienced violations in that community and who had also gone through the Tree of Life process. They therefore knew the benefits of participating in the workshops, but also that there would be no material or financial gain for them. They recognised that they would have to wake up the next day in the same neighbourhood and face its circumstances. Because of these factors, they could identify and take into account the real dangers as well as the real opportunities in their community, resulting in their plans being modest and realistic. For all that, they were full of real hope. Enabling Participants to Continue Moving Forward In making these plans, it was clear that the organization was resisting any impulse towards a giddy acceleration of the process: it could have been argued that since the workshops were of such enormous benefit and inspiration to the Big Tree of Life members, perhaps they should plan twenty more right away, so that as many people as possible could participate. There were, it seems, at least three reasons why it was well advised to proceed relatively slowly. First, funding was limited. While the Tree of Life process does not require significant resources, the value of residential workshops cannot be overstated. Individuals who wish to participate and who attend the first day of a workshop could be intimidated or otherwise prevented from completing the three-day programme. This is particularly true for perpetrators of violence who may be unconvinced of the benefits of completing the process after only one day or who may be visited by others who persuade them to disengage from the process, but it also applies to mothers who struggle to secure child care arrangements and people who cannot pay for or access transport to the workshop venue. With this in mind, it could be counter-productive to the aims of the process for the organization to press on and conduct the workshops in a non-residential or lower-cost format. Therefore, proceeding in sync with available funding and resources was certainly wise in this case. Second, the Tree of Life works with people who, at sometime in the past, have had their autonomy and dignity wrested from them: all of the facilitators have experienced violations of some kind, completed a workshop programme, and managed to achieve a measure of healing. To micromanage the process from above would undermine the therapeutic goal of restoring the facilitators’ awareness that they can contribute to the direction of their own and their community’s lives. In the approach it has adopted, Tree of Life works with people to enable their healing and empowerment. The organization does not list the specific outcomes and steps that it wants participants to achieve. There is no pressure to ‘forgive’, to ‘reconcile’, or to ‘move on’; in fact, Tree of Life explicitly refrains from using any of these terms or other prescriptive language. It is important to the Big Tree of Life that participants, regardless of whether they go on to become facilitators, are aware at every stage that they own their process of healing: their recovery and what they go on to do in their lives do not ‘belong’ to the programme. That is what empowerment means in this context: participants recognise that they can better cope with their experiences and that they are free to share this