June 30, 2021 – Recently, the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI) conducted a series of trainings in Conflict Resolution Education for 253 educators from 15 primary and secondary school teachers in the Acholi Sub-Region. Held in May and June, the trainings were designed to help empower the educators with the tools and skills they need to successfully mediate conflicts within their schools, improving their environments as well as academic performance.
This two-month long training took place under our Conflict Resolution Education in Schools program, which aims to help educators learn how they can convey values of non-violence and tolerance to their students in addition to providing them with the skill they need to peacefully resolve conflicts they encounter at school. One of WPDI’s central tenets is that values conducive to building peace and promoting reconciliation must be learned at the earliest possible age, so education is all the more essential in places like the Acholi Sub-Region that have only recently began recovering from decades of civil conflict. In a region where thousands of children were directly abducted from their schools during that period, it is even more important that conflict resolution education be taught directly in primary and secondary school classrooms, providing youths with tools that will shape their values, attitudes, and behaviors for the years and decades to come.
Throughout May and June, WPDI trained the teachers in topics like conflict and its sources, mediation, active listening, empathy, and power dynamics. Each session was designed to be both practical and interactive to ensure that every teacher would be able to put into practice what they learned with us. “I think the trainings helped build the capacity of our teachers, who will surely become peacemakers both here at school and within their respective communities,” said Beatrice, the principal of Vanguard Primary School in Gulu. “Many expressed to me how grateful they are to have new skills and knowledge that will allow them to be forces for good.” Catherine, a teacher at the Gulu College School, expressed a similar sentiment, telling us after she completed our training that “This brought positive change to the lives of teachers at my school. The skills we all gained will go a long way in promoting peace here.”
In the coming months, WPDI will work closely with our partner, the Education Above All Foundation, to grow the impact of our Conflict Resolution Education in Schools program even further. Together, we will continue to build a culture of peace in Northern Uganda and help students, teachers, and educators remain at the forefront of a movement to bring about positive change in communities there.
