Conflict Resolution Training

My volunteering job also included seminars on conflicts resolution.  I prepared the seminars  using basic conflicts resolution theories and exercises in order to make the audience actively participating to the seminar

We expected between 20 and 40 people but 69 people showed up! My NGO wanted to address the seminar to pre-school teachers, I didn't agree much, cause a better audience would have been school teachers  but the Secretary of the Community Centre, was abroad and he came back few days before the workshops so we did not have enough time to rearrange it.

In any case, the teachers were very receptive and  they made a lot of interesting questions and comments.

One of the activities was the conflict tree, I asked my translator to divide them in groups and make them examining the Sri Lanka conflict diving it among root causes, core problem (the trunk) and effects of the conflict( breaches and leaves). At the end of the activity I asked to get the papers to have them translated after.

Once I got the translation I discovered that the topic was  on a general ethnicity conflict, different from what I asked.

Living in a war affected area, and also traveling around the country I discovered that the conflict is a very delicate topic, people are scared to share their thoughts and feelings. Only once, when I was in Arugam Bay, I had a open conversation with a Tamil guy, but he was drunk and ended the talk whispering, fearful that someone could overhear us!

What I can say is that after 4 years of supposed "peace" the situation is on a stake, their life fload normally, but this is the picture the government and also Sinhala population want to give...If you are a tourist, and you dont ask too many question everything looks normal, but if you are inside you can see how under the quite surface there are still the old unresolved problems, with human rights violations and discriminating issues.

This upcoming weekend I will be in Vavuniya, visiting a special kids school, but also I will have the opportunity to make some research around, then I will end up in Jaffna. There, I am going to meet some Europeans working in NGO, I am happy about this, so I can get a clear and unbiased picture. What it is frustrating is that after four years of apparent calm nothing really changed...

  I dont know if this pressure cooker will explode again one day!