Even as 81 countries in the world became more peaceful as shown by their improving peace indices in 2016, 79 countries have become increasingly less peaceful. As a volunteer working with Pravah Jaipur initiative for the last 3 years, I have had opportunities to explore my community and nurture a better understanding of the values I hold dear.

Having seen several instances of violence in my life, I have come to prioritize peace as a deeply held value. When my mentor Ashutosh asked me to attend a workshop on peace building, I considered it an opportunity to sharpen my understanding of the values that matter to me. Hoping to learn more about the approaches and tools to build peace in my community, I attended the UNESCO MGIEP #YouthWagingPeace workshop at TERI retreat, Gurugram, from 22nd – 25th May, 2018. We learned about tools to promote peace, prevent violent extremism and collectively designed a one-day workshop session to take our learnings forward to the community.

After coming back to Jaipur, in my community, I implemented what I learned at UNESCO MGIEP. This is a brief report of my action project after the workshop.
1.    Café Mohalla
 ‘Café Mohalla’ is designed by Pravah as a space for young people to learn about themselves and the issues they face, through discussions and workshops. With the help of my knowledge and experience from UNESCO MGIEP workshop, me and my mentors I organized a session on Peace Building. Peace building session contained various activities that helped young people in understanding various acts of violence and intention behind them. 

After a week for the preparation of Café Mohalla, we mobilized college students and conducted a test run for our session. After the first test session, on 15 July 2018, we took Café Mohalla to our organization. Around 30 participants had been mobilized to attend the session.

My personal feedback of the session: 
    What worked: 
1.    Strong Personal connect with the audience.
2.    Interactive discussion between audience and facilitator.
3.    Quality design as per the design.
4.    Enthusiasm and Energy throughout the session.

    What could have been better: 
1.    Discussions could have been more deep and nuanced.
2.    Culmination of the workshop could have been better.
3.    Pre-planning of the session and logistics.
4.    No. of participants in session could have been more.
5.    Articulation during transition in the session could have been improved
6.    Some participants were not able to share their opinions openly.

2.    School Session
At the same time, for the past month, I also approached schools to conduct a session on PVE. Finally, a school in my locality accepted to host my workshop. After a mutual discussion with my mentor, I decided to simplify the session as per the requirements of the school. While the PVE session designed at the UNESCO MGIEP workshop was strongly based on ‘identities’, we simplified the session and spoke about ‘Stereotypes’. We spoke against stereotypes, quick judgments in the classrooms and the harm in ‘labeling’ schoolchildren with different identities. These labels perpetuate discrimination among students. 
We conducted our session with school teachers on 21 July 2018 at Amar Baal Senior Secondary School, Goverdhanpuri, Jaipur.

My personal feedback of the session: 

•    What worked: 

1.    Strong connection with the audience.
2.    Quality Design.
3.    We could have been reached more no. of schools.
4.    Access of training teachers for gave us different kind of audience.

•    What could be better:

1.    Audience analysis could have been better.
2.    Simplification of design.
3.    Pre-planning of co-ordination between facilitators could have been better.

Conclusion
Self 
•    I got the better clarity about the concepts of violence and peace more deeply. Though I am in process of learning.
•    The action project I implemented sharpened my leadership skills.
•    This action project helped me in exploring myself as a designer and facilitator and I gained confidence.
•    Now I hope to improve these peace-building tools as much as I can from the community’s feedbacks and reflections.

Society 
•    People who attended Café Mohalla were able to discuss and identify violent actions in their community.
•    After attending the session, participants were eager to work towards improving their community’s situation. 
•    With the session conducted in the school, teachers have become more aware of their hidden biases and stereotypes. This session may help them to reduce violent practices.
•     We may have contributed towards creating a safer classroom spaces in that school.
 

Contact details:

Mr. Sameer Nainahawat: sameernainawat@gmail.com