Peace Education in Manipur

About

TIMELINE: August 2011 to July 2014

Peace Education programme primarily focused on promoting peace education and education on reconciliation options in different colleges, schools and communities, to sensitize them on conflict issues towards promotion of good relations among them.

GEOGRAPHICAL COVERAGE: Districts-06; Block-13 and villages-35

DEMOGRAPHIC COVERAGE:

IMPLEMENTING PARTNERS: Diocesan Social Service Society, Imphal, Manipur

Impact

  • 2472 students of seventeen colleges and 2178 students in 22 schools were reached out to through the programme, which helped significantly resolving small conflict situations in the communities. These colleges and school have integrated peace education component for educating and sensitising their students.
  • Peace and vigilant team in each of the 35 villages were formed which is the direct outcome of the project. The committee representatives were from women groups, youth groups and men groups. The committee was also represented by the members of village council and village heads. The idea of having vigilant/peace team has been shared by the project staffs and finally with the consent of the village community the team is formed and activated. This is the only structure formed by the staff, commonly called Peace and Vigilant team. They are being recognized by the village authorities.
  • Fifteen tensions and potential clashes were defused through village peace and vigilant team, indicating that people sensitised and educated on peace issues and processes take proactive actions for promoting peace and resolving issues. The village peace and vigilant team (single village committee for maintaining peace) are formed with the purpose observing and keeping record of day today tension and conflict dynamics of the villages and take appropriate action to control the situation before the outbreak of major conflict in the area. There are number of cases recorded where the peace/vigilant team took initiative and timely defused the tensions and prevented from erupting conflicts.
  • A Peace Education Manuel was drafted in 2012 with the intension of imparting training to different groups/level of people in Manipur. The document is still at the draft stage but being used continually for the trainings. Audio-visual on peace education, IEC materials on Local Capacities for Peace / Do No Harm (LCP/DNH) were developed for training students in schools and colleges. During the project period total 1187 college students and 1517 school students were trained on peace building and reconciliation options.
  • Following training modules are included in the Education manual:
  1. Teacher Training for Leadership Development in Peace Education – STEP
  2. NCERT Model for Peace Education Program in Assam
  3. Pathways to Peaceful Classrooms
  4. International Training on Peace and Conflict
  5. PEACE (Popular Education and Action Centre)
  6. Peoples Dialogue Initiatives (PDI)
  7. About STEP ( Standing together to enable Peace)

Government response has been good in supporting peace education in Manipur. DSSS has been imparting peace education program in the schools. Even now with the support from NEDSSS peace program is going on well.