Mutual Understanding, Mutual Benefits in Peacebuilding

Since August, Reynold Samuel from Trinidad, Ashis Himali from Nepal, and Martin Mwanga from Uganda have been working in Boston at Peace First, a nonprofit organization that teaches young students critical conflict resolution and civic engagement skills through peace games and curricula. All three men are Community Solutions Leaders, contributing innovations to and learning from Peace First as they build conflict resolution capacity in Boston youth during their four-month fellowships.

Samuel, who works with at-risk middle school students at Families in Action back in Trinidad, is helping design a peer mentoring program for eighth-grade students. These peer leaders from Higginson Lewis School will have completed the Peace First curriculum and would take on the role of mentors for the K-3 students attending the Bird Street Community Center’s after-school program.

Erin VandeVeer, Director of School Partnerships, hopes this new model will expand the scope and reach of the organization’s peace programming, which is traditionally taught by AmeriCorps volunteers in a classroom setting. Samuel’s seven years of conflict mitigation experience have helped him bring new ideas to building the conflict resolution skills of these youth, who are becoming peer mentors for the first time.

Ashis Himali has been revamping Peace First’s monitoring and evaluation systems. Mia Khera, the National Program Director for School Change, said that Himali has become their “resident expert” on their new survey technology and has been integral in helping the organization transition to better monitoring and evaluation systems. Himali hopes to take his new-found expertise home to implement similar evaluation strategies within his organization, Alternatives Nepal, which works to build peace and multiculturalism through youth engagement.

Martin Mwanga, drawing on his experience working with street children in Uganda, will also take new practices home from Peace First. Mwanga hopes to use similar peace games to those used in Boston to build peace among out-of-school children back home in Uganda. VandeVeer says Mwanga brings a unique talent to their organization, teaching their volunteers the intangible skills required for peacemaking and the importance of empathy. His enthusiasm for the peacemaking among youth, she said, is infectious.

Mwanga also learned that peacemaking has to include multiple stakeholders. With this in mind, he wants to train police and other security officials on nonviolent approaches to peacemaking among street children, his main beneficiaries at the Teso Children’s Development Foundation. He hopes this will start to “change people’s attitudes towards street children, so that they can have a better future and live within more peaceful communities.”

The Community Solutions Program is funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and implemented by IREX. It is accepting applications through Nov. 7, 2011 for the 2012-2013 cohort.