“An inclusive space with knowledge and tools for the youth to Activate reconciliation and communal harmony.”
Peace Incubators a platform to train youth with knowledge and skills that spearhead youth-led initiatives geared towards creating communal harmony among their communities. Peace Incubator is an inclusive space to share and empower young people with knowledge and tools for social cohesion.
International Youth Alliance for Peace (IYAP) with the support of The USAID-SCORE conducted the 2nd Peace Incubator workshop in the Kandy district from the 22nd January to 25th January 2021.
The workshop was conducted by Dilina Janadith, a young lecturer at the University of Moratuwa. 12 selected participants were trained through the online platform to develop their storytelling skills which was a crucial factor in creating a content for their videos. They were trained to create their contents based on social cohesion with the idea of community development and to view a situation which disrupted social cohesion in a creative way to give a message to the community by involving to settle the matter.
The Kandy district workshop was attended by participants of all religions and ethnicities. The participants were provided with intense training on developing their skills in order to contribute to the peace and betterment of the society with social cohesion.
During the four-day workshop, the participants were trained to develop their skills such as critical thinking, creativity, analyzing issues by looking it from a different perspective, digital storytelling, reconciliation, adopting to changes, leadership, equality, social cohesion, and presentation.
“Before participating in the workshop, I did not have an idea about digital storytelling. I have seen many videos on Youtube and always wonders how such content is made. I did not think that there was such a huge effort in creating such videos”. – Supun
“I participated in the workshop with some knowledge on video editing and relevant software but I did not have the idea to create content and the methods involved in creating such content. This knowledge will be helpful to me in the future to create more valuable content”. – Janith
“There are a village full of Tamil estate workers and they have been cornered by the Sinhala community in my area. My aim is to bring their socio-economic problems to the society and to highlight the importance of social cohesion”. – Janindi
Ms. Aafrin Yaseen, Project Officer of International Youth Alliance for Peace, at the beginning of the workshop, stated that the main aim of the workshop is to develop social cohesion among the community and the participants should act as the leaders of the community to bring the message to the society, not in a traditional way, but in a more creative way.
The peace incubator workshop was conducted in Jaffna in September 2020. The main aim of the project was to create a network with the Kandy and Jaffna participants and work towards attaining the end goal of the project; by bringing Youth voices from diverse communities in an effort to create communal harmony itself which creates Social Cohesion.
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