{"id":"935ffb6f-c1d2-7213-ad09-698e0ec69b83","short_name":"cpmhf","human_readable_name":"Community Peace Museums Heritage Foundation (CPMHF)","dataset_count":0,"created_date":"2026-02-12T17:33:00+00:00","data_portal_url":"","default_licence_id":"notspecified","description":"The Community Peace Museum Heritage Foundation began as Programme (CPMP) three decades ago with Dr. Sultan Somjee, a Satpanth Ismaili born in Kenya, working in the 1990s as a head ethnographer at the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). Somjee and his assistants were researching the African humanist philosophy of Utu toward mitigation and peacekeeping as an alternative approach to Western-imposed methods.  Their study prompted a re-discovery and revitalization of traditional African peace values and associated heritage traditions in the form of community peace museums and peace tree sites.\n\nEach peace museum is distinctive to a specific Indigenous group and simulates their particular style of a traditional house. Inside, peace material culture is exhibited, used as a teaching collection and utilized for ceremonial purposes. Peace trees are planted around the museum as a living environmental gallery, a reminder of peace heritage. The museums are overseen by local elder board members who meet under the shade of the peace trees to discuss disagreements and negotiations, as is their ancient tradition. Curators collect, research, and document peacemaking materials, oral traditions, and environmental symbols such as peace trees. These trees also have medicinal and healing properties, so are closely associated with physical and mental health and peace. The community peace museums keep the oral and visual traditions of African peace wisdom alive in villages and across eastern parts of the continent. They provide a contrary narrative to the prevalent media depictions of essentializing Africans embroiled in violence erupting between nation-states and ethnicities.\n\nThe multicausal factors of conflict in Africa include the historical and contemporary political tensions between some ethnicities, ongoing impact of cultural oppression and brutality during colonialism, sovereignty and residual government colonization structures, lack of economic and natural resources, disputes between Indigenous cultural traditions and religions, and climate change intensifying the scarcity of arable land, water, and food. While these factors parallel struggles in other parts of the world, the numbers and severity of disputes in Africa have continued to escalate over the past forty years.\n\nOne significant response to these challenges is the development of Indigenous peace museums based on cultural peace heritage traditions. It is important to note, cultural diversity characterizes the African continent, with over 2,100 languages by some estimates and 3,000 different ethnic groups, which contributes to a range of peacekeeping traditions.  As well, people practice traditional religions specific to their ethnic groups, such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and other religions, sometimes creating syncretic beliefs and practices. The curators act as peacemakers and environmental activists to reconcile discord between human beings and prevent the destruction of the natural world. The resilient community peace museum movement raises the possibilities of reviving cultural heritage to bring peace and reconciliation to communities in conflict, particularly in Africa, but can be applied elsewhere in the world.\n\nCPMHF Vision, Mission and Thematic Areas\n\nCPMHF has established a unique Kenyan art and cultural collaborative project called UTU Project (Fixing the Nations Democracy through the Young Voices for Change), which fosters and catalyzes creative and community-driven projects for social change. The acronym “UTU” is a Swahili alteration for “Humanistic Values”. Historically, the origins of Utu in Africa are rooted in the Bantu people’s culture. Utu comes from the Swahili word meaning ‘being mtu’ or simply ‘being human’; it stands for a set of traditional African values that connect the Supreme Being, community, Elders, ancestors, and nature. The philosophy is based on respectful reciprocal relationships between these five elements\n\n\nCPMHF has established itself as a Civil Society Organization in the ‘artivism’ space that creatively integrates art and activism to promote active civic participation, human rights, livelihood improvement, and development for Kenyan youth.\n\n\nCPMHF builds on the power of creative arts to strengthen understanding of emerging issues in Kenya and increase youth involvement in positive development processes. CPMHF’s Utu Project has a vision of mainstreaming arts and culture in the pursuit of social justice for all. Utu project works with artists, awakening in them a deep socio-economic and political consciousness. This is achieved by empowering them to connect their art to the quest of a better Kenya. Utu Project is an integral part of the social justice network and works closely with community groups and like-minded Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the governance and human rights space to further the goal of championing human rights while advocating for social justice and dialogue in Kenya.\n\nVision\n\nA community where African Humanistic Values of Utu inspire change and empower the general public and the marginalized in Kenya who are involved in online activism, and Artivism particularly those advocating for governance reforms, gender equality, human rights, anti-corruption, and public accountability to interact with the communities, nationally and others across the globe to provide a space for growth of civil society and human centered culture.\n\nCPMHF Mission\n\nCommunity Peace Museums Foundation will strive to enhance multi-ethnic and multi-faith traditions of peace, and the transformative power of Artivism as an essential force for social change in Kenya, that fosters sustainable human development, gender equality,  freedom of expression and democracy.\n\nCPMHF Values\nRespect of all cultures\nEnhance multi-ethnic and multi-faith traditions of peace, culture of civil society and dialogue that encourage CSOs and communities to strengthen governance reforms, human rights, anti-corruption, and public accountability\nPromote oneness and peaceful co-existence of all societies and cultures\nCreative, committed and community centered\nRespect for women’s rights and wisdom, elder’s wisdom and children’s oral and artwork.\n\nOUR THEMATIC AREAS\nSocial Justice, Arts, Media and Culture and Expanding Partnerships.\n\nSocial Justice\n\nAt CPMHF, we recognize that change comes through working collaboratively with like-minded groups and individuals. As such, working closely with local communities is at the heart of our work, as we advocate for the improvement of the quality of life in our communities and the country at large.\nThe goal of working to make a difference in our communities is close to our hearts; therefore, we continually strive to produce and empower active citizens who are able to drive change.\n\nArts, Media and Culture\n\nCPMHF is dedicated to the advancement of the arts and media. This is developed through building the capacity of emerging artists and facilitating the integration of artistic expression for livelihood development. This entails investment in an innovative learning and capacity-building approach in order to activate artists through active artistic expressions.\nAs an arts focused organization invested in issues of social justice, CPMHF works with artists to continually develop and disseminate active art, whether performing or visual. The objective of this approach is to conscientize the public, and spark citizen engagement in the governance space through CPMHF’s Utu project. This project seeks to support and establish artivism as a pillar programme for social Justice and economic empowerment of youth through talent development, training, incubation, and engagement for good governance.\nYouth empowerment as a theme is embedded within Artivism. CPMHF’s Utu Project seeks to popularize and entrench artivism as an avenue through which youth may utilize their skills to earn a living, and contribute towards social transformation\n\nExpanding Partnerships\n\nSince its start, CPMHF has worked closely with community groups and like-minded Civil society organizations (CSOs) championing good governance and human rights while advocating for peaceful coexistence and dialogue among civilization.\n \nCPMHF understands that the best approach for creating meaningful impact can be actualized through collaboration and strong partnerships.","exclusions_policy_url":"","first_publication_date":"2026-02-17T17:51:00+00:00","hq_country":"KE","organisation_identifier":"KE-RSO-21805","organisation_type":"60","region":"1027","reporting_source_type":"primary_source","website":"https://cpmhf.com/"}