Workshop on 'Train-the-Trainer on Peace Education'

Organised by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

Venue: Godavari, Lalitpur, Nepal

August 19-24, 2005

Introduction

Armed conflict in Nepal has claimed about 12,000 lives in the last ten years in stark contrast to the peaceful atmosphere the country enjoyed previously. With the sharp rise in the breadth and intensity of the Maoist conflict, the Nepalese media have been devoting considerable space and airtime to issues, events, processes and personalities related to the conflict either as decision makers or those affected by such decisions and acts or as eyewitnesses and experts. However, the fact is that merely reporting casualty figures and statements given by the warring sides does not fulfil the social responsibility of the news media. Ability to understand issues from different standpoints and presenting the same in an independent and professional manner can play a vital role in boosting prospects of restoring normalcy and peace. The media can either play the role of a watchdog by taking a critical look at the combatants while analysing the causes and consequences of a war or it can play the role of a propagandist trying to promote only one side while demonising the other side.

As such, workshops and trainings on conflict reporting and peace educations are considered important. Accordingly, FES, since 2003, organised a series of three workshops in Kathmandu Valley for Nepalese journalists and NGO activists dealing with communication sections of their organisations. Held in November 2003, August 2004 and January 2005, the workshop theme was "Peace Journalism: On the Road to Conflict Communication." In response to the excellent feedback from senior editors and recommendations by the participants themselves, FES decided to organise the workshop on trainer's training for peace education in August 2005.

Objectives

The latest workshop in the series had the following objectives:

• To identify potential trainers
• To provide relevant knowledge, skills and methodology
• To acquaint participants with systemic constellation approach
• To improve the contents of peace education in Nepal
• To discuss prospects of creating a network for peace education

Methodology

• Head of FES/Nepal Office Dev Raj Dahal, FES Administrative & Finance Manager Nav Raj Dahal and media consultant P. Kharel held meetings to discuss and decide on the media institutions to approach for nominating participants.
• Chiefs of media institutions were contacted and asked to nominate their candidates for participation.
• The workshop classes included lectures, group discussions, practical exercises, systemic constellation sessions, and question & answer sessions.
• The focus was on making the workshop interactive to the maximum possible extent by encouraging participants to ask questions and also come up with their own views and answers to topics and issues pertaining to conflict, peace against the background of media functioning.

Procedure

The programme proceeded smoothly and was completed within the stipulated time frame. After the initial in-house discussion by FES to select the media houses to be included for participation, bearing in mind the requirement of diversity of the team composition, the concerned media organisations were contacted, briefed about the objectives and schedule of the exercise and asked to nominate their representatives.

The topics and resource persons were selected on the basis of the course outline drawn up by the principal trainer, Joergen Kulssmann. Details were worked out in coordination and consultation with FES staff and resource persons.

The workshop was a residential training. The participants were lodged at a resort hotel some 15 kilometres south of Kathmandu. The training hours were from 9:00 to 17:50.

Participants

In accordance with the target of attracting 16-20 participants, the workshop had a total of 18 trainees, ten of them women. Apart from a German student who was undergoing an internship at the FES office, the participants were either working journalists or students doing their Master's degree in journalism and mass communications. The participants represented leading media education institutions, newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations.

Resource Persons

The training team consisted of seven resource persons. As in the past three workshops, Joergen Klussmann, a German national with considerable experience in conducting training on conflict reporting and peace education, served as the principal trainer. The other resource persons were Dev Raj Dahal, head of FES/Nepal; P. Kharel, former media advisor at FES/Nepal and now secretary general of Nepal Press Institute; Ram Krishna Regmee, head of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kantipur City College in Kathmandu; Shova Gautam, chairperson of Institute of Human Rights Communication; and Nirmala Sharma, secretary of Women Communicators' Group and editor of Lekhmala, a features service on gender issues ( Shova Gautam and Nirmala Sharma were participants in the first training in the series held in 2003.) and Mr. Yub Raj Ghimire, Chief Editor of Samaya Weekly.

Topics of Presentations

The topics covered in the course of the programme were organisation of workshop basics; organisation checking list; motivation basics; networking; identification of target groups, interests, identification of methods and guest speakers; developing information sources; conflict in Nepal and the role of communication; conflict and peace; promoting the message of peace; solutions within the system; motivation spirituality; dynamics of conflict; conflict communication; conflict transformation; and reconciliation.

Two group exercises and two systemic constellation exercises were also conducted.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The workshop was conducted smoothly. The participants were very enthusiastic, energetic and inquisitive. This contributed to making the entire programme participatory, lively and productive. Participants said that the programme allowed them to share knowledge and skills and work in teams. The mixture of reporters and communicators from different media outlets was a valuable experience for them. From gender perspective, too, the programme proved to be well-balanced, with ten women and eight men.

The participants appreciated the composition of the team of trainers. Two of the resource persons were women who had attended the November 2003 workshop on "Peace Journalism: On the Road to Conflict Communication." The keen interest with which the participants took part in the proceedings underscored the ability of the trainers in stimulating the participants' interest. Most participants showed interest in attending more of such workshops that FES could organise in future. The general consensus found the workshop highly successful and fruitful for the participants in acquiring knowledge and enhancing their skills pertaining to various aspects of peace, conflict and media functioning.

In the concluding session, the participants made a series of recommendations, some of the main ones being as follows:

1. A day-long seminar that assembles all the participants of the four workshops on conflict and peace that FES organised in Kathmandu Valley since 2003 to share experiences and review the media situation in Nepal.
2. A week-long comprehensive training of trainers comprising of 4-6 participants from each of the four workshops organised so far so that the resultant trainers are able to organise training on conflict reporting and peace in different parts of Nepal.
3. Field visits should be part of training programmes.
4. Since more than 75 persons have attended the FES workshop series in the last two years, they need to be in regular communication by developing a network among themselves for regular updates and information sharing as a community of journalists and experts taking interest in conflict reporting and peace journalism.