AYEPO in Collaboration of United Religious Initiative (URI), organized a one day Youth Training Program entitled “ From Personal Peace to Community Peace” on Friday, September 25, 2020 in celebration of the International Day of Peace.
Promoting peace in the society and ensuring peaceful coexistence among citizens can be achieved when human beings first reach to inner peace themselves as a moral belief and will. With that in mind, we kicked off the event to get a glimpse of how to experience inner peace, as the group practiced some breathing techniques and spent some moments of silence together, the two important things that can relax our mind and emotions and overall, our inner world.
Following the first session on Inner Peace, Mr. Hussain Ali Karimi (AYEPO program director) led the second interactive session on theories and practices of interpersonal communication skills and highlighted their practical application in creating and maintaining peaceful and effective interpersonal communications within the society and job environments.
Then, Ms. Bahara Hussaini, (head of AYEPO’s center for peace and dialogue) facilitated the third session through which the youth group discussed and shared ideas about traditional mechanism of conflict resolution “pros and cons” and spoke about peace-building and role of youth in conflict resolution.
The crowd was inspired by a beautiful blend of voices and ideas shared from heart by our guest speakers.
At the closing session of the one day training program, Mr. Ahmad Shah Karimi (AYEPO Director) briefed the audience about AYEPO’s mission and the programs and intention to empower and support Youth to become change makers.
Ms Shukla Zadran (Afghan Youth Representative to the UN) spoke about the peace process, youth’s role in it, and encouraged them to raise their voices and stand together for their rights, concerns, dreams and hopes to be included in such processes.
Mr. Jawad Zawulistan (Managing Director, Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization) compared notes between negative peace and positive peace and underlined the significance of positive peace as it leads to social justice and equality. He also talked about their works and how those help bridge differences and inspire people to find unity in diversity, be it social, cultural and other forms of differences.
Mr. Mohammad Ashraf Joya shared his ideas about how the youth can identify and solve social challenges starting from their own families.
At the end, drawing session was conducted in which all participants engaged in a drawing with the message ‘Together for Peace’ and that also speaks “despite all differences” — We Are One — and every one can embody and amplify that within their families, communities and society at large.
