Empowering South Asian Youth in Peace Activism will be held on Feb 4-9, 2012, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha (India).

 

QPSW, Ekta Parishad, HMI and Indian committee of Youth Organizations (ICYO) is organising the same.

 

 

Peace building in South Asia is a challenge for youth. Youth from South Asia do not have much access to non violent conflict transformation training. Moving from a national to a South Asian identity is an important step for strengthening grassroots democracies.

 

South Asia Peace Alliance (SAPA) works on nonviolence and peace issues in South Asia. There is an identified need for youth from South Asia to learn about peace activism, facilitation skills and social engagement

 

 

 

To this end, SAPA plans a series of 5 day Training in India for Youth from selected youth from  organizations from across South Asia.

 

 

This workshop is happening at a time when historic Jan Satyagraha Campaign 2011-2012 (of SAPA partner organization Ekta Parishad, Year long Gandhian action In India.) is in progress. This gives opportunity to be part of this process as a part of non-violent training.

 

 

Participants Targeted: 25 from South Asian countries

 

Programme content

 

Youth will learn the practicalities of non-violent action and thus gain confidence to be able see demonstration of putting theory into action by taking part in on-going nonviolent campaign in India. It will provide empowerment through dialogue and provide a toolkit for future action.

 

In this workshop the “Turning the Tide” tools for Nonviolent power for Social change.

 

Ekta Parishad module on Pedagogy of Nonviolent action and an Introduction to the Basic Facilitation skills for youth to work with community will be shared.

 

For Whom?

 

This is programme is open to those who believe practicing nonviolence by applying at the community level. Those desiring to become facilitators in the process at the grassroot level. We prefer senior youth (Above 25) working with  voluntary organizations, Institutes, Civil Society groups, Committed individuals.

 

Registration

 

There is token registration fees is Rs.1000.for a 5 days workshop. Those part of the workshop can opt for optional exposure programme.to be with Shri P.VRajagopal, noted Gandhian, peace activist and leader of Jan-Satyagraha Campaign, for 3 days. For more details http://js2012.wordpress.com/

 

Travel

 

Participants will have travel on their own or get sponsorship for individuals or representing organizations.

 

Last Date for applying Jan 20, 2012, application form enclosed.

 

For any further details write to secretariat.sapa@gmail.com  

 

Contact Person

 

Vijay Bharatiya & Rita Roy

 

Mobile: 91-9427700762

 

SAPA Website: http://southasiapeacealliance.weebly.com/index.html

 

SAPA Regional Secretariat 

 

2/3 A, Block-A, Jungpura,

 

New Delhi-110014  (INDIA)

 

 

Gerald Conyngham

 

Gerald is a Quaker who is deeply committed to peace building Gerald Conyngham, took over responsibility of the South Asia programme from Stuart Morton in October 2011. He has been associated with the activities of Ekta Parishad and come to India before. He attended the 2007 Janadesh (People Verdict) march by 25000 marginalsied communities for their livelihood rights in India.

 

Gerald Conyngham is a Resource. Person and has Facilitating skills for Turning the Tide (Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) programme Nonviolence for social change)

 

Gerald Conyngham has given talks about the Quaker way of protesting actively, and non-violently and organized events for Ekta Parishad and others for dialogue about peace work. He has also part of delegation, Gerald Conyngham of Quaker Central Committee.

 

T. Thayaparan, Sri Lanka

 

T.Thayaparan has been involved with peace building, conflict transformation and reconciliation work since the last 11 years with his organization, the Peace and Community Action which is a national organization committed to peace work in Srilanka. One of the founders of this organization, his belief and understanding about peace is to see it as a process of understanding and transformation of relationships and to deal and address the factors which are influencing human beings to be violent or nonviolent. The war in Srilanka has affected the relationship between communities. Unless people are aware about the implications of the judgments which they make about other communities building peace and relationships will be very difficult in Srilanka.  He believes that nonviolence is a process in which people try to understand each others’ needs and are willing to listen and support others. He and his organization are trying to raise awareness on these issues. They are trying hard to work on nonviolent processes in all our activities and it is become our core process now.

 

Thayaparan is the SAPA regional trainer and has conducted workshop on Breaking the Cycle of Violence and also on Facilitation Skills

 

Ramesh. P

 

Ramesh Prakashvelu works with Henry Martyn Institute, Hyderabad which is an International Centre for Research, Interfaith Relations and Reconciliation, committed to building capacities of individuals, organizations and groups for transforming relationships and conflicts. He has been working as a peace-builder since 1999, and much of his work is related to strengthening peace constituency and capacities in the North Eastern states of India i.e. Manipur, Nagaland and Assam to work for peace with justice.

 

He believes in non-violent approaches to bringing about personal, organizational, social, cultural, economic and political transformations and for the last 11 years has been working with women, youth, human rights activists, church elders, leaders of socio-cultural organizations and indigenous groups to strengthen capacities, build bridges across divides and creating spaces for intra and inter-group peace building work.