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Annual Report 2001

Program Report:
Active Nonviolence and Peace Education - Levinia Addae-Mensah, Coordinator

Nonviolence and Peace Education Program was officially launched on 23 May 2000 at Sogakope, Volta Region of Ghana with 41 participants representing Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria, Togo, Sierra Leone, La Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, and Cameroon. The participants made the decision after a ten-day intensive course in Active Non-violence and Peace Education conducted by the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding in Ghana, the International Fellowship on Reconciliation in the Netherlands and the Amani People’s Theatre from Kenya with support from the Catholic Church of Austria (DKA-Austria). The program seeks to promote the culture of nonviolence and peace within West African communities with particular focus on children and youth. By promoting the life-giving social-cultural values of West Africa, the program hopes to facilitate the building of pro-reconciliation and just communities.

Objectives
· Develop region-specific curriculum, teacher’s guide and source books for Nonviolence and Peace Education
· Organize TOT workshops for teachers from the seven pilot countries
· Design strategies for the implementation of a three-year peace education program and conduct trial test of the curricula in 84 schools selected from seven West African countries
· Organize a regional conference of ministers for education, youth, and the girl child in 2002 to adopt policies that will mainstream peacebuilding and nonviolence in education in West Africa
· Develop peace clubs in schools in West Africa

Highlights of Activities
The second phase of this program—replicating the ten-day active nonviolence and peace education training held in 2000—continued in the first quarter of 2001. Replication training workshops were held in Nigeria and Ghana.

· This year, the program entered into its third phase. Primary focus of phase three was the institutionalization of peace education in non-formal and formal educational structures in seven West African countries (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea-Conakry, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and La Cote d’Ivoire). Activities planned were a curriculum development workshop, publication of the curriculum, four in-country training of teachers and training of peer mediators in seven countries.

· Phase three took off in May 2001 with the development of region-specific Non-Violence and Peace Education curricula. The May meeting dubbed, “Experts Meeting” took place from 28th – 30th May 2001 and brought together twenty-six peace education experts from Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Senegal. The experts produced working draft curricula for primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels. The curricula emphasize West African values for social reconciliation, justice and peace building, civic responsibility, human rights, and social living. Along side the curricula, teacher’s guides and source books were also drafted. The experts committed themselves to improving the products from this meeting.

· To this end, a working committee of six experts from Senegal, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire was constituted to coordinate the gathering of more information to improve the source books, teacher’s guides and curricula.

· The working committee held two meetings, in August and September. Both meetings were held in Accra, Ghana. These intensive sessions considerably improved the draft teacher’s guide for primary, junior secondary and senior secondary schools designed during the experts meeting. A lot of effort was also consecrated on developing the source books and consolidating reference materials.

· The original plan of having four TOT workshops was changed to seven information gathering workshops extending the material development process to the target countries. This innovative process was agreed on by the experts to ensure that cultural and contextual particularities are considered in the materials.

· Four workshops have so far been held in Enugu in Nigeria, Freetown in Sierra Leone, Grand Bassam in Cote d’Ivoire and Nangbeto in Togo. In each of these countries, the workshops brought together an average of thirty teachers from primary, both junior and senior secondary and tertiary levels of education.

· The impact of this program, since it is largely related to attitudinal change, has not yet been realized. However, so far, 120 teachers from the primary, junior and senior secondary and tertiary levels of education in Nigeria, Togo, Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire have had the opportunity to reflect on education for peace and the need to create a culture of nonviolence in West Africa. A wealth of experience and knowledge in this field have also been discovered. Twenty active peace education experts who did not know one another have worked closely together for seven months now.

Lessons Learned
Out of the challenges we encountered while implementing this program, several lessons have been learned:

· The amount of time needed to develop effective and efficient resource for a region specific peace education program was grossly underestimated. For instance, the one meeting budgeted for the development of the curriculum was unrealistic. This is a process that requires either several meetings or few meetings but over longer periods. Getting experts to devote the time and energy required for the process is also difficult and expensive.

· The Anglophone–Francophone divide in West Africa became very real during the curriculum and resource development activity. Throughout the process, several issues have come up regarding the social-cultural differences between the two phones. Hours have been spent trying to reach satisfactory compromises for both sides. In some cases, the debates have been over a word and its connotations in the languages and countries. These challenges are stemming from the different perspectives on education that exist between Anglophones and Francophones. This makes one wonders if different processes should not have been put in place for the two linguistic blocks. How well this augurs with efforts at regional integration is another puzzle.

· The organisation of in-country workshops has also been a great learning experience. It has revealed at first-hand the nature of the diversities that exist within the sub-region. We are therefore to be aware of the fact that all countries are not at par and therefore the strategies and methodology for institutionalising peace education should not necessarily be the same for all countries.

· In the coming year, WANEP intends to complete the three outstanding workshops in Guinea, Liberia and Ghana. The draft tools will then be reviewed to reflect the various experiences and cultural diversities in the sub-region. TOT workshops will be organized for teachers again in the seven countries and the purpose will be to train them for the trial test of the tools. While the testing period in twelve schools per country are on-going, a regional conference of cabinet ministers from the education field as well as other stakeholders will be held to adopt policies that will mainstream nonviolence and peace education in West Africa. WANEP also intends to facilitate and coordinate the establishment of peace clubs in 84 schools in seven countries of West Africa.

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