Peace Building Information Sharing Workshop Ends In Kenya

Peace Building Information Sharing Workshop Ends in Kenya

Many countries in Africa today have come to terms with the reality that peace building is an integral part of development work and should therefore be mainstreamed into national development agendas. The approaches and methodologies used may vary from one country to another, so also are the challenges that unfold along the way. Even within the same country people in peace building face different challenges, thus the need for those working in peace building and development to come together from time to time to share experiences and map out new strategies to address the emerging challenges.

by Sheku Dickson Koroma

It was against this background that Christian Aid engaged the services of two trainers last year to carry out a joint impact assessment in Kenya and Sierra Leone. One of the outcomes of that exercise was the holding of an experience-sharing workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, from March 19-21, 2003 in which two of NMJD’s programme officers (Paul Lansana Koroma and Sheku Dickson Koroma) participated actively.

Other organisations from Sierra Leone taking part in the workshop included the Methodist Church of Sierra Leone (MCSL) and the Sulima Fishing Community Development Project (SFCDP) while the Kenyan participants were drawn from the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), Northern Aid (NA) and Amani People’s Theatre (APT)

The workshop focused mainly on the development of key principles for effective peace building, the challenges involved and how to assess the positive difference in conflict situations. The workshop aimed at deepening participants’ understanding of peace building and conflict transformation, exploring key principles of peace building, sharpening their skills for conflict identification and analysis and identifying linkages between local level initiatives and their contributions to positive change in the broader context.

In order to achieve their set objectives, the organizers designed an all-inclusive programme that sought to address a number of issues including the people, the process, peace and conflict, analysis and interventions, identifying and addressing challenges, etc.

Each participating organisation made a presentation on their work especially in the area of peace building - explaining the context within which their programmes operate, what the programmes are trying to achieve, the strategies used, the activities carried out and the main challenges facing the programmes and the organisation. These presentations, which generated a lot of discussions, helped to enrich the experience-sharing sessions.

At the end of NMJD’s presentation, the organizers and the rest of the participants sought clarification on whether NMJD have professional counselors to handle trauma situations, how sensitive issues are handled, why the peace activities of the organisation do not cover the whole country and why there is huge success in some areas but not in other areas. All this was meant to encourage NMJD, whose work they highly lauded, to consider exploring new frontiers to cover the entire country.

In order to foster lasting partnership, participants agreed on pursuing exchange programmes in a sort of twinning arrangement wherein NMJD will work with their Kenyan counterparts-Amani People’s Theatre (APT) and MCSL with NCCK. NCCK and APT should also explore ways of working together with Northern Aid to help open North Eastern Kenya to NCCK and APT.

The workshop was climaxed by a field visit to Northern Kenya where cattle rustling is the cause of a long-standing conflict between the Pokots Tukanis and Maraknettes. The trip proved very useful especially for participants from Sierra Leone.