July 30, 2010
  
  • Promoting nonviolence and protecting human rights defenders since 1981
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Peace Education and Peace Building

Positive Peace building describes the activities that strive to achieve a society that is not only free from war (peace as not-war) but in which social justice and human rights prevail (positive peace). Positive Peace building is not only timely in a post-conflict situation but at any time - preventing the outbreak of violence, laying the ground for a lasting and sustainable peace agreement during violent conflict as well as re-building a just society after the outbreak of conflict.

Peace Education

Some PBI projects carry out Peace Education activities, as part of peace building, notably PBI Indonesia. In PBI Indonesia, Participatory Peace Education teams work together with local partners to develop community peacebuilding activities that include, for example workshops or developing activities for the International Day of Peace.

The PBI Peace Education Program primarily takes the form of Conflict Transformation trainings and workshops. As part of a strategy to both follow up and maintain sustainability of the program, a Training of Trainers is also offered at the request of a local partner. The goals of the workshops are to strengthen and build the capacity of local organisations and individuals to develop and effectively use conflict transformation models that are appropriate to the local situation. In this way, PBI hopes to empower local Peace Builders and Trainers, lessening and eventually ending the need for PBI's program.

Participants from these workshops have come from a wide cross-section of Indonesian society, including: religious organisations, traditional leaders, women's groups, human rights lawyers and activists, grass roots humanitarian organisations and members of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.

The methodology and core values of this work is based on the experience and work of John Paul Lederach amongst others. People and their everyday understandings and experiences are seen as the key resource in a community and this knowledge is valued and trusted. PBI in this context provides a safe space for people to recognise, reflect upon and develop and share their own unique approaches to conflict to conflict situations in their daily lives, their community and society at large.

PBI works from a perspective which recognises the strengths and capacities for peace in communities and incorporates principles of adult learning and popular education. A workshop with a focus on conflict resolution may have extensive parts in which the local wisdom and local strategies for mediation and conflict resolution is explored and unravelled and the participants build their own models for working in their own communities.

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