Prevent the fire first Guests: D. Defruyt W. Huyzentruyt

IE: Hello and welcome back to another episode of We Can Find a Way. This podcast is sponsored by Dr. Paolo Michele Patocchi, Attorney at Law and Arbitrator. I'm grateful for his engagement with alternative dispute resolution in Turkey by participating in multiple conferences, teaching at Bilkent University in Ankara, and now supporting this podcast, We Can Find a Way.

In this episode of We Can Find a Way, I'm covering a restorative justice collaboration project from Belgium in the asylum context. Yes, you heard it right. In a world where refugees are increasingly unwelcome, there's still interest in decreasing incidents in asylum centers by creating more connection and increasing participation of residents through adoption of restorative practices. I have two guests who will be explaining all this to us, one of which is Griet Defruyt, who is working in an asylum center in Poelkapelle, while the other is Wim Huyzentruyt, who is a facilitator in a youth organization called Legand. I will give their short bios at the end of this episode, but now let's dive into the interview which took place on the 5th of May 2025.

Thanks for agreeing to talk to me Griet and Wim. What were the reasons for introducing restorative practices in your asylum center and in what areas it's working best?

GD: I would start by saying that we're not the only asylum center in Belgium where it has been applied. So Poelkapelle is just one of the federal or the governmental asylum centers here in Belgium. It has been applied a few years ago because we saw quite a high number of incidents in asylum centers and we wanted to work more on connection with residents and on on finding solutions for conflicts without breaking all the bonds between colleagues and residents. Then we started to work together with Ligand to apply this in the centers to decrease also the number of incidents. And there were quite a lot of conflicts between residents or between colleagues and residents.

Mostly we speak about aggression incidents, and then the solution to that was quite often the resident, he needed to change the center. So we had a conversation, but it was mostly in one direction, that we made the decision, “okay, you need to leave the asylum center and you need to go to another asylum center and start again from zero over there”. And then we began to question that. It's not because you are moving someone that the problem is solved. So mostly when the resident was moved to the other center, mostly the same problems, they come up again. If somebody cannot handle a conflict or does not have the instruments to solve it, then it's repeating itself in another center. That's why we started to question this way of working. And then Oranjehuis, it's an organization in Kortrijk. They organized a sort of timeout. It's two weeks. And then the resident, he can leave the center for two weeks and take the time to think about what happened. And then also somebody of the colleagues can visit the Oranjehuis the timeout and can go talking with the resident about what happened in order to restore the damage which is done and in order to bring the resident back to the original center.

IE: In fact, that person is Wim I guess, the organization that you have worked with, that has arranged these trainings?

GD: Yeah, we have two organizations which we are participating with. So it's Oranjehuis and Ligand. But Ligand is most known for the restorative view of working. They worked a lot with schools. And then a few years ago also Fedasil, so the governmental organization for giving shelter to refugees. They took contact with Ligand. And since a few years, every colleague working for Fedasil is educated in restorative practices.

IE: And you have said this is mostly helping with your agency and the residents who are basically asylum seekers, correct?

GD: Yeah.

IE: But also among the employees of your agency?

GD: Yeah, of course. I think to install it in our centers, it starts with the colleagues. It's working best when everybody is convinced about the restorative practice and is open for conversation, then it's working at its best. But it takes time and it takes education. It's not always easy because there are persons in our organization who have more radical points of view. And then it's also, I think, the responsibility of the managers of the center to make sure that also the persons who have a radical point of view are educated in the other point of view. And that also the managers of the center, in their decisions, they make a point and they make it clear. “Okay, we work like this”. And also the person who is more radical of you needs to participate in that.

IE: When you say radical, it sounds bureaucratic to me. I'm not quite sure. So can you elaborate on that?

GD: Yeah, you always have persons who say “yeah, this happened with this resident. He has been aggressive towards me in the kitchen. Yeah. For me, now it's done. I do not want to talk with this resident”. That's an Example of colleagues who are more…

IE: I'm not going to play.

GD: Yeah. Or they ask “Okay, this happened. They have to have a written warning”. And then the management needs to say, “Okay. But what we think is that this resident needs another chance, needs also a chance to restore the damage which has done”. That's an important thing.

IE: And when you say a resident, this is an asylum seeker, what is the world of a resident in an institution that is somehow inviting conflict with the administration? Or from the viewpoint of a resident?

GD: The language, which is differently. It's something which is creating sometimes conflicts, misunderstandings. Also maybe the system, which is the structure which they don't agree with. Just the living together with other residents, with other asylum seekers. It's sometimes.. there are tensions, which is normal. There's also a lot of insecurity about their future because they do not know if they will be recognized as a refugee or not. It's an environment where it's quite normal that sometimes there are conflicts. I think when we would stay in a room with four persons not speaking the same language. Yeah, it's normal. Sometimes things happen and..

IE: And from different pasts, I guess, as well.

GD: Yeah, of course. And a lot of residents are also traumatized or they cannot handle frustration or angriness.

IE: Wim, I would like to turn a little bit to you. What did you think when you were approached by Griet or agencies to collaborate on restorative justice?

WH: It was my colleague Rino who started here within our organization, restorative timeouts for youngsters living in asylum centers, because of the fact he was hurt by seeing that there were things happening in the centers. The traditional authoritative approach was by transferring the youngsters and not by handling the conflict and dealing with the conflict and working together with the asylum workers and the youngsters who were living there. In the working together with asylum centers, we saw that there was a different approach, a different vision in the way we looked to conflicts and in the way our colleagues of Fedasil were looking to conflicts. In that way, we believe we could be supportive in facilitating better ways in handling conflicts from our experience in working with youngsters in challenging situations, that's how it all began.

IE: Basically, you have carried your experience from schools to asylum centers, especially working with the young people?

WH: Not only from schools, because the Orange House, Oranjehuis, where Griet was talking about, is a youth care organization. We work with youngsters in challenging situations, and what we see happening with those youngsters is mainly conflicts that makes their life complicated in their families, in their schools, everywhere they are in society. In working with those youngsters, we learned in what way the restorative approach was useful.

IE: In what way?

WH: In taking responsibility again for themselves, to handle life again, to believe in themselves and to take responsibility in order to restore conflicts, but also to restore their lives. We got to know the restorative approach more than 15 years ago, by a colleague of ours who was working in the United States in the IIRP, the International Institute for Restorative Practices. And in that wa,y the vision of “restore” came in in our organization.

IE: How does it work in practicality? Because you have also alluded to the challenges of language. How do you train in the same language that everybody understands each other? And maybe you need translators. It must be quite complicated to do all of this.

GD: It is. First of all, every person which was in the conflict has to agree to have a restorative conversation. And then indeed you have to have interpreters. It's not always easy. When we have a restorative conversation, we plan it very well and we also explain it to the residents before. What is the aim of the conversation? We ask if everybody is agreeing with it. In fact, I think the restorative working and also the education that we had and everything. It's not only about there's conflict happening and we are planning a conversation to solve it or to have the different point of views to make sure that everybody is taking responsibility. No, it's not only about that.

It's also a lot about preventive work. And that's what we have learned also from Wim and from Ligand. I remember in the education we had, there's the restorative pyramids. It's about the climate the refugees are living in. It's about having a safe environment, having a livable environment. It's about how you organize everything. If there is a space to go outside. In our center, refugees are cooking themselves. It also takes away a lot of incidents because if they are cooking themselves, they are spending their time by cooking. They are deciding themselves what they will eat. We think a lot about how we can avoid conflicts also. And that's, I think, also something which has changed since we have the education from Ligand and since we are more convinced about the restorative work. It's that what can we do to avoid the conflict? What can we do to have a pleasant environment, even if it's a refugee center where somebody doesn't want to stay? Yeah. How can we make it as livable as possible to avoid conflicts?

IE: Because that will prevent the negativity that is going to pile up and….Can you share incidents where you thought restorative justice helped?

GD: A kind of incident, which we have a lot, is between boys and girls. Sometimes it's between boys of the center and girls from outside the center, or it's with boys in the center and girls in the center. It's mostly that the boys are making, like, sexual things to the girls or they are looking at the girls. Sometimes happens on the bus outside the center. It sometimes happens in the center or it happens at school. There's one incident, it were smaller boys who were giving a lot of sexual remarks to a bigger girl of the center. And then…

IE: Cat calling? “oh, baby” kind of?

GD: Yeah, that, or just looking at her or...

IE: Staring?

GD: Yeah, yeah. And then we asked if the girl was agreeing to meet the boys here in the center. It were boys from the center, but they do not really talked to each other. And then we really had a conversation with the two boys, the girls, the assistants of the people. So the personal assistants were also participating to this. And then two interpreters also because they did not speak the same language. We gave everybody a chance to speak. That's also very important, that everybody can explain their way of looking at what happened. And in that conversation, I think they started by ignoring the fact what they did, saying, yeah “we did not do that”. And then we really gave the girl her chance to speak. We did not interrupt. It was really her telling her story and saying how she's feeling about that. And then she also said to the boys: “yeah, what if your sister was handled like that and everything?” And then little by little, the two boys, they realized, what we did was not good. And then at the end of the conversation, all the participators were agreeing that “okay, we will not do this again”. And everybody had, I think, quite a good feeling afterwards. That's one example.

IE: What about the parents? Because often they're not accompanied by their parents.

GD: Yeah. It's sometimes difficult if they are here without parents speaking about this incident. The girl is an unaccompanied minor, but the two boys, they have their mother here. And then we also said to the two boys that “okay, we will have to tell this story also to your mother or to make sure she knows about what you are doing”. We did not inform the mother without telling it to the boys.

WH: When Griet was telling about one of the incidents they had, I was thinking about an incident while we were having a training in a center. There was like youngsters switching on the fire alarm. They were telling about it during the training. That was one of the things that happened a lot in their center. But then the responsibles of the center went looking to the alarm central and to the place where the alert came from. Most of the time, nothing happened afterwards, there was nothing. And they thought it was the youngsters of the center who were playing with the alert. But when we were there, we were eating at noon, together with the residents and the team we were training. It happened again. The workers there went looking if there was a problem or not. But one of the colleagues came back and said “I see smoke everybody out”. They thought it was a real one, but everybody had to go out. But that went so slow because people were used. It was not a real alert. I know afterwards, in this training, we talked about the incident and the impact of the incident on the colleagues and what they saw happening with the residents. We discussed on how to handle this in a restorative way. And they organized like a big circle with the youngsters and with some residents who were really affected by the incident that happened when we were there. Like there was a woman who was pregnant and her husband was really worried about the impact on the unborn child and his wife. They were in the circle too. So the aim of the circle and the meeting was not finding who had done it, but was raising the awareness of the youngsters, of the impact of what they were doing. In the weeks afterwards, they've noticed that it didn't happen again. I don't know, some years later, now it's happening again. Probably, it will occur again. But that's one of the small examples I'm thinking of.

IE: From what I understand, you're describing places that are full with people who have difficult stories, difficult situations. They're living in a densely populated place. There are opportunities for more conflict because of all the differences and difficulties and everything. And it is giving people voice to participate, reducing tensions, even if it doesn't resolve all the issues at the centers. I guess I can sum it up like that?

GD: Yeah, it's a lot about participation and connection. Because if you don't have connection, you cannot work in a restorative way. And also, participation is really important in everything if it's in a conflict or if it's in just participation in the working of the center. I think this is really important.

IE: Are there any other federal agencies interested in replicating this?

WH: Here in Belgium, Fedasil where Griet works for is the federal agency, the national agency for asylum seekers. But you also have the partner organization of the Red Cross. Part of their work is also helping people with flight story, having shelter. So we are also working together with them. And at this point we have like an army project. It's like a European project where we are working together with Fedasil, Red Cross. The aim is implementing RP in the working in asylum centers. That's what we do. So we are working together with in all the centers here in Flanders. It takes a long way, but what we see now is that it began with working in the centers. And now we more and more see that the policy of the organizations are really investing now in how can we facilitate structures within our organizations so the people working in the centers can work more in a restorative way.

IE: It's like a more organization driven rather than a federal policy change kind of, if I understood it correctly.

GD: Yeah. That's true. It's more an organizational thing. Nowadays, our management is really thinking about how will they apply it structurally. They also need to finance it. All the education offered by Ligand nowadays they are thinking how they will make it sustainable. Because they started educating every worker without really from the management. They said, okay, this is our point of view. But they did not really give instructions about how to apply it. I think think each center has a different interpretation of it, which is good. But nowadays I think the management is thinking about how will they make sure it's more structured.

IE: So it doesn't remain like a wisdom of one organization, but I guess it becomes a policy?

GD: Yeah.

WH: Idil, just what I wanted to add: The story we are writing together with Griet and their organization is a story from bottom to top. And it started really at the bottom in working together with who are working with the residents. And what we see now is that it's going up in the organization. Some weeks ago, we were sitting together with the manager of Fedasil on discussing what was needed in the policy of the organization to work more restorative in the center. And now they are really hearing the voices of the people who are working in the organization. And they are working on how to facilitate that in a better way, more structurally. So it's an interesting movement.

IE: That's why it caught my eye. Because in organizations or in governments, we're very much used to decisions being taken in the central and then spread around to little veins, if you will. But right now, both of you are describing is something bottom up and then it's becoming organizational wisdom. And then trying to influence the structure and then maybe the structure will spread it to other federal agencies or other governmental agencies. At least that's how I see it, as an outsider. And that is very interesting. Maybe the last question then: How do you connect that to your country? We are seeing all these, like, innovative approaches developing in Belgium, like Retissons du Lien or restorative cities, even like European Forum for Restorative Justice. Is there something unique about Belgium that these things are coming up?

WH: It's a good question. The first thing, like I’m thinking about, if you look to the history of Belgium, we are a country that was ruled a lot by other nations. And maybe that helps us now in handling conflicts in a better way. And for sure, we need to be really humble in that too, because there's a lot of work to do. Also, not everybody believes the restorative values are the way to go in handling conflicts in a better way. And there are in each organization other voices too. So we should try and stick together and try to find solutions together. One of the things that is most important to us is if I think about what would Reno say, one of our colleagues, who is not here facilitating the restorative timeout. If you spend that much time in handling conflicts, maybe we should switch the time we handle conflicts and the time to build relations and to maintain relations instead of restoring them. That's what Griet said and meant with working in a preventive way is more helpful than constantly extinguishing fires. It's better to prevent fires than extinguish them?

IE: We should focus on preventing fires rather than extinguishing them.

WH: That's the word we were looking for.

IE: Okay, very good. Thank you so much.

Griet Defruyt works in the asylum center of Poelkapelle, Belgium, which is organized by Fedasil, the federal agency for the receipt of asylum seekers. She is responsible for the team who is supporting 48 unaccompanied minor refugees in a center, offering them shelter.

Griet studied social work and completed a master degree in gender and diversity at the University of Ghent. She wrote her master thesis about family reunification of unaccompanied minors. I cannot help but make a remark about the location of the asylum center she is working at. When you Google Poelkapelle, it turns out to be the place of rest for British, French and German soldiers in the First World War in thousands. In fact, there are thousands of even unidentified soldiers. So, it is actually quite restorative that a place that has so much horror has now become the location for such a humane approach to asylum seekers.

And now Wim Huyzentruyt studied geography. He was a teacher in a secondary school for more than 10 years. He now works for Ligand, which is part of Youth Care Organization Oranjehuis and is a facilitator and trainer that supports people and organizations in education, well being, asylum, migration, youth care in handling conflicts in a preventive and restorative away.

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As always, I like to close by thanking musician Imre Hadi and artist Zeren Goktan who allowed me to use their music and photograph in the podcast.

Thank you and hope to meet you in the next episode.