“Imagine that the piece of paper you are holding is someone you are having conflict with. Go ahead and do anything you want to the paper,” said our Laode Arham to young participants of Student Initiatives on Peacebuilding Workshop held in Jakarta between May 14-18, 2014.
The room suddenly turned quiet, everyone staring at the piece of paper in their hand. Not long after, two participants started to grasp the paper and turned it into a crumpled paper ball within seconds. Other participants folded the paper, some tore it and some others left it as it is.
The torn down and crumpled pieces of paper showed that a number of participants tend to see conflict as something negative and equal with violence. A few others admitted that they tried to build a dialogue with the “enemy paper”, while the rest decided to ignore it. These varied responses reflect five identified styles of conflict: avoidance, accommodation, competition, compromise, and collaboration. The conflict style reflection was one of the activities performed by the participants of the workshop. Through experiential learning, sharing, and dialogues, the participants learned wise leadership and conflict resolution skills. The workshop, held as part of our project to end youth recruitment into violent extremism, aims to raise young people’s awareness of the dangers of violent extremism and to develop their leadership abilities and prepare them as peace leaders in their respective communities. Begun in Jakarta in mid May 2014, our workshop was held in four cities and involved around 125 students from 17 universities and 14 schools in nine conflict-prone areas in Indonesia. Targeting young and influential leaders, the five-day workshop was attended by students who were selected through a youth mapping at schools, campuses and youth organizations. Coming from different backgrounds and organizations, these students were chosen for their potential as agents of peace, or peace leaders, as we referred to the participants during the workshop.
The young peace leaders also learned, gained inspiration from and networked with experienced peacebuilders, such as Mohamad Miqdad from Institut Titian Perdamaian (a peacebuilding institute), Sofwan F. from Sohibul Iqtida (a Solo-based peacebuilding organization), Mohamad Ichwan (journalist and expert in religious and violent extremism issues), Wawan Gunawan from Jakatarub Community (a Bandung-based interfaith network), and Irfan Amalee, a social entrepreneur for peace and founder of peacebuilding organization Peace Generation.
| |
The workshop succeeded in stimulating more positive attitudes from the participants. Rasemi from Tadulako University, Palu, Central Sulawesi, who is familiar with violent conflicts in his hometown of Poso, initially believed that violence could be a solution. But by the end of the workshop, he began to believe that there is no alternative to non-violence in solving conflicts. “Honestly, I have grown accustomed to a violent campus culture which shaped my way to deal with conflicts: by committing violence. But after this workshop, I got to understand the meaning of kinship, diversity, and other cultures.”
Muhammad Sholekan from Semarang State University, Semarang, Central Java, admitted that he is now more open minded in viewing differences. “Thanks to SFCG, I am now more assured that we should not judge others based on their differences, including ideological differences. Differences are natural, they are not supposed to be denied or argued over. Differences are actually beautiful when we find the beauty in them,” said Sholekan.
At the end of the workshop, participants were required to design peacebuilding initiative plans to be conducted in their respective schools and universities. The plans, to be executed by the end of the year, will be followed up by consultations and discussions to ensure they are effective to address the identified issues and will bring expected and sustainable results.