Fruits of Peace

Today we began a workshop with 16 young people from the Youth@Work project in Honiara. The program is collaborating with our office and the Ministry of National Unity, Reconciliation and Peace on the "Peace-building and Reconciliation" section of their larger program which focuses on job seeking skills. The program is in its 3rd phase and the current group is 300 youth mostly in their mid-20s who are unemployed or underemployed. Unfortunately the statistics for their future is a bit sobering - 1/3 will probably never find jobs and 1/3 will have to creat their own in the informal sector.

They are also part of the globe challenge of youth bulges, which perhaps could also be seen as opportunities, but unfortuately is often instead seen and witnessed as problems for countries. When you have a huge population of young people, particularly males, there is concern about the potential for violence if conflicts and concerns are not properly addressed and they don't have productive outlets for their energy. This doesn't mean that too many unemployed youth = violence, obviously it is much more nuanced than that, but for the sake of the youth themselves and societies' futures, it is important to find ways and support for all people, especially youth to become contributing members of society.

In Honiara, Youth @ Work is a program working to address some of this and luckily in the program which focuses on CV writing, interview skills, 6-months internships, seminars, etc. they are including 4 sessions for all youth about peace-building. In addition to big sessions with all the youth, we also asked to introduce a smaller, voluntary program for people interested to go more in depth to the topic.

Welchman and I are facilitating "Fruits of Peace: non-violence and increase the peace training" and it is based on the Alternatives to Violence Project. I first attended an AVP workshop (basic & advanced) with a group of Rwandans in 2005 and became a facilitator in 2008 under the tutelage of a former prison inmate (the population for which the project was originally designed) and a co-facilitator who regularly does the workshops in Latin America. This isn't officially AVP because I don't have a trained co-facilitator and we are also using a few other methodologies, but I do need to give credit for my experience.

The faciliatation team.

Fruits of Peace is off to a good start and I'm excited for the fabulous group of youth and all their experiences and ideas. This isn't a workshop to teach them but to provide a frame for looking at challenges and problems they know well and to begin to identify how they might work to address them. It's also a lot of fun with games and laughter, book ending more serious discussions and topics. I can't wait for all I'll learn from these peers.