Bringing Messages of Peace to the Border

“I am a citizen of Kyrgyzstan,” Suhrob Ergashev says proudly when asked about his nationality. Ergashev is ethnically Tajik, one of scores of minority groups in this diverse country. A history teacher in a village near the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, where violence often flares on ethnic lines, he strives to link his Tajik-speaking students with the rest of their country and the outside world.

Ergashev’s students now engage communities and lead dialogue through Drama Clubs he founded with help from IREX’s Youth Theater for Peace (YTP) program. YTP promotes sustainable conflict prevention at the community level through a participatory theater methodology called Drama for Conflict Transformation (DCT).

Fluent in Kyrgyz and Russian in addition to his native Tajik, Ergashev brings a quiet but noticeable energy to any room, and his students clearly adore him. It’s hard to believe he wasn’t always this engaged in his community.

“Forum Theater has changed me as a human being,” Ergashev reflects, referring to the DCT methodology he was trained to facilitate through the YTP program. “Before the training, I didn’t know how to connect with youth. I would go to my history lesson and then go home—I was reserved. Now I have 100% attendance in my class and I communicate with my students’ parents.”

“I organized a school workshop using the theater methodology, and then we showed our first performance for students at my school,” Ergashev shares proudly. “Now every month, we show a Forum Theater play in our Drama Club and new students are joining all the time.” The group was invited to perform at the top Kyrgyz-language school in the area, a challenge since not all of Ergashev’s students speak Kyrgyz. “I was nervous to go there at first because I was afraid how they would be received,” Ergashev recalls. “But the performance created dialogue and many of the youth are still friends.”

“Other schools in the region have asked me to hold workshops on Forum Theater and to set up drama clubs.” Ergashev was so busy with his teaching load and the first drama club that he asked his students to serve as trainers for the second club in his community, and says they now run it on their own with his support. Ergashev’s groups are among 22 school Drama Clubs established under the YTP program in Kyrgyzstan that have reached over 9,000 people to date with plays on local conflict issues.

Ergashev has big plans to continue engaging his community’s youth through theater—including starting an NGO that will serve as a legally registered fundraising base for the drama clubs. He’s applying for a grant through YTP to train more teachers and students in Drama for Conflict Transformation and help them start their own drama clubs.

“Forum Theater has changed me to become more involved, and more open,” Ergashev says. There is no doubt his experience and community work will inspire others in the village of Andarak to change, too. When a group of YTP youth participants is asked to describe the qualities of a leader they admire, hands shoot up:

“We want to tell you about our teacher, Suhrob.”

The Youth Theater for Peace program is implemented by IREX and funded by USAID.