13 May, 2005

Two new additions have arrived at AHIMSA. Mai is from Vietnam and a visiting student from Brandeis University. Paul is a new staff member from Colombo who has experience as a mediator these past 10 years and he will be one of the facilitators who will be working to offer the Peer Support and Peer Mediation program to young people across Sri Lanka. (Paul speaks Sinhala and Tamil as well as English.) It is exciting to finally complete the writing and undertake the training of trainers so this program can begin. The process includes working with three separate children’s clubs and groups of young people including Tamil, Sinhalese, and Muslim communities.

We have a draft of materials which will be adapted, added to with Sri Lankan examples, and finally be translated into Sinhala and Tamil languages for use across this country. The concerns about ‘western ideas coming to Sri Lanka’ and neo colonialism are challenging in the same sense when delivered by Sri Lankans and grounded in the rich Buddhist and Hindu teachings of peace. A powerful base for this program comes from the months of research with young people across Sri Lanka who shared their ideas and experiences of conflict and resolution with Angie Hermon and other AHIMSA staff. There were seven separate programs with groups of young people of various ages and Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and Christian faiths. Over 280 children participated in total.

I remember my first experiences in the far north of Canada with peace and conflict resolution when my colleague here from the UK, Jacky describes Sri Lanka as raw in many ways. No white bread, this place, but a rich texture of sounds, smells, colours, energies and peoples. As my trishaw weaves in and out of traffic, buses race with each other to get to the next stop first, and two buses, a car, a truck and a cow are all going one way down a two way road there is a sense of living on the edge.

What translates from Calgary to Chabougamo, Quebec or Batticaloa, Sri Lanka? My colleague, Monica, is reading a Sri Lankan book on psychology. (She is working in a psycho-social program with Hikkaduwa this week end.) She and I had a good laugh as someone had written about ‘Italiana Syndroma’. Are you familiar with this syndrome? It seems that the author writes about what happen to families when the father goes to work abroad, in Italy. Translation and the authoring of Sri Lankan material is essentially about grasping concepts and meaning in a culturally sensitive context. There is not only a conflict sensitive approach to programs and processes but a culturally sensitive context which is broader that the conflict.

Rather than adapting western approaches to Sri Lankan context it is an inside-out approach which asks, what is intrinsic to communities here and how does that grow and develop from within?

My work with writing, developing, and training in peer support, conflict resolution, and peer mediation is coming to an end. The next tasks for AHIMSA staff will be to inclusively continue to develop the material with the input of the young people involved in our field testing. I will be available from Canada, or the UK to connect and help with co-creating a unique program for this place and this time.

I can not describe the excitement of watching the development of people, programs and processes as we work together toward a peaceful place. Sometimes a negative peace occurs as there is an absence of war; people are just tired of it all. The positive peace, built between people in homes, communities, schools is growing. The seeds are growth, people move from survive to thrive, and peace happens one relationship at a time.


The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes from within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the centre of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this centre is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of people.

Black Elk
The Sacred Pipe


Conflict abound. Three projects approaching the same thing, work in one community, and none communicate with each other. Conflict resolvers struggle within their own groups. Discussion about the ethics of programs, the directions of organizations... it all happens. Conflict is lively, sullen, challenging and at times destructive. Yet also there is good will and the willingness to leap into peace with all its risks and problems. I am honoured to be a part of it.