Making peace

Updated on: Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Kolkata: When college students Mariya Salim and Aishwarya Chattopadhyay took part in a 7-day Peace Training programme in Nepal in June, little did they realise what it would spark off.

The 2 friends took part in a peace-training programme organised by Asian Resource Foundation, which consisted of select students from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India.

The programme inspired them so much that the 2 girls, both PG students of human rights, took it upon themselves to start conducting workshops called Peace For Youth.

“We had pledged to spread the message of peace in a declaration that we read before the Nepali prime minister,” says Mariya.

Mariya and Aishwarya conduct workshops for 25-30 students involving some stimulating activities and interactive sessions.

“We teach students how to live in peace with everyone and not just friends and family,” explains Mariya.

The 3-hour workshop consists of presentations prepared by felicitators and also the students and various energisers. The energisers are “discrimination games”, which might appear to be plain activity but leave participants with a lesson to inculcate harmonious existence.

In one of the activities, students are divided into groups and they are asked to illustrate their version of a peaceful world on chart paper. Once they finish drawing, the pictures are swapped between groups and they are then told to obliterate the other groups’ picture of a peaceful world.

Each time this activity takes place, the students are more excited to destroy the former picture. And as a punishment for the destruction, they have to rebuild their previously destroyed worlds, which at first seems unworkable but with some encouragement the outcomes leave participants stunned.

“It (the workshop) wasn't done in a boring fashion like the usual lectures or speeches and texts. The activities and games were fun and it made us wonder that many little things when put together can make such a big difference,” says Rajshree Maheshwari, a class 11 student of Birla High School.
These activities are designed to affect human psychology by allowing each individual to realize his prejudice towards others. By doing this the objective of these exercises is to reveal the significance of peace as also diversity in the world.

The girls do not plan to stop their peace lessons at schools. “Both of us have been conducting peace workshops with Modern High School for Girls, Birla High School and Loreto College and we plan to spread the culture of peace in corporates too,” says Aishwarya.

Making peace

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