Violent extremism has been a global issue. Initiatives of Change (IofC) is a global movement has responded through an annual conference held in Caux Switzerland for the last three years. The last conference was held on 8th-12th July 2019. Indonesian team was represented by Miftahul Huda and Nenden Vinna, who are working for PeaceGeneration Indonesia to be part of TIP. They came as participants as well as the workshop facilitator and speaker for focus country-Indonesia.
Although this is their first time to facilitate the workshop in Caux with diverse people, they enjoyed and felt privileged to be given this opportunity to be part of TIP. These are what Huda and Nenden said about TIP.
“It was our first time facilitating a workshop in such a large context like Caux. We had around 15 people come to our class from diverse backgrounds; most of them were young people, and some of them were participating in the Caux Scholars Program, studying Peace and Conflict Resolution. Also in attendance were the program director of Caux Scholars and some activists in peacebuilding from different continents such as Africa, Asia, Europe, and America”.
We are grateful that our workshop ran smoothly with the support of the TIP team. We had activities such as “Peace starts with me”, breaking prejudices, living with diversity and finally we played the board game of Galaxy Obscurio. We were grateful that we were given time and opportunity to share our work in Indonesia and to talk about Indonesia. It gave me courage and confidence to share the story about our work and Indonesia which is often unnoticed by the rest of the world.
We also realize that the issue of violent extremism is a global challenge and that’s why it requires collaboration among the stakeholders. Indonesia has taken this as a serious threat to security as well as ordinary life. For the last 2 years (2017-2018) UNDP Indonesia was able to respond to the P/CVE with the project “CONVEY – (Counter Violent Extremism for Youth) and Peace Generation is included in this project. I am grateful that the Indonesian government is proactive and supports civil society organizations to bring solutions.
We got some feedback that people enjoyed our workshop as we combined discussions and practical activities, along with a lot of play and fun during the learning process because we believe it is important to bring creativity and fun into our learning.
We heard many stories about what happened in different countries like Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Burundi, Kenya, UK, US, etc and how people take initiatives to prevent and encounter violent extremism and bring peace and real change for people through different initiatives from honest conversation, dialogue, art, music, storytelling, activating public space for interaction, etc. We learn that our works are to create peace and healing for people and really to create answer and hope for humanity.
Penulis : Miftahul Huda and Nenden Vinna Mutiara Ulfa
Editor : Mela Rusnika
