This is a story from before the COVID-19 pandemic that has prevented physical gatherings. However, the URI community still meets virtually.
The coordinator of Fé-minina, a URI Cooperation Circle (member group) in São Paulo, Brazil, felt that she should bring women together to discuss how women can promote peace. So they arranged a meeting called “Women for Peace.” Marli and Célia are two of the speakers. At the meeting, the participants support one another. Being a group of women with tight relations, they want to share their special talents with each other with the target of creating peace. They want to be a safe and productive place to discuss local and global issues.
This is of special importance because, during many centuries in human history, the female figure was based on male values. Most of them made the female polarity suffer different kinds of violence; physical, psychological, and emotional. Those forms of violence contributed to women having much more difficulty abandoning behaviors that made them suffer. Groups that strengthen the bonds between women, especially kinds of groups like this Cooperation Circle, where the women are at a mature stage of their lives, are especially important.
The bond among these women shows that they can be together for a noble purpose, not fighting or gossiping. This runs counter to the idea that we have been told for many centuries, which is that women cannot be friends without negative competition. The Cooperation Circle members aim to understand the perspective that each woman has, through her sensibility, of the world.
