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Social Justice: Y-BUILD: Working for Peace in Srinagar, India
an article by STEP (Standing Together to Enable Peace)
“Peace is not the absence of conflict but the
ability of people to deal with it imaginatively.”
With the idea of this STEP (Standing
Together to Enable Peace) Trust which is working
towards building a free, just, non-violent,
sustainable, equal and mindful society through
education, advocacy and action, stepped into the
valley of Srinagar and conducted a five days
residential camp with the youth in September 2012,
with participation from close to sixty youth from
different colleges of Srinagar and Delhi. These
young people got the opportunity to interact with
each other and understand each other’s problems
and circumstances. Workshops were conducted using
a mixed media approach involving theatre, film
making, photography and critical media literacy.
click on photo to enlarge
After six months STEP conducted a two days follow
up workshop on the 15th and 16th of April 2013
called Y-B.U.I.L.D (Youth Bridging Understanding
through the Innovation and Leadership
Development). The aim was to provide a concrete
platform for youth to use their creativity and
innovation in a more meaningful full way and walk
the talk.
During the workshop through different activities
they came to know how to analyse situations and
problems. Many of them are trying to apply it in
their day to day life. They have started to look
into the root cause of the conflict and also
started questioning propaganda.
Participants from this two day workshop formed three
youth clubs, directed by their dreams using
appreciative inquiry to seek solutions. These were:-
Pulwama Law College, Srinagar: Our Dream is to reach
together to strength peace process in Kashmir.
NIIT, Our Dream is a Friendly, Prosperous,
Expressive and Free Kashmir.
K.G.P (Kashmir Government Polytechnic), Our dream is
to give interactive education to people, empowering
and creativity.
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DISCUSSION
Question(s) related to this article:
Is there a renewed movement of solidarity by the new generation?,
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LATEST READER COMMENT:
from Javier Collado Ruano, Director of Edition at Global Education Magazine, on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity.
Solidarity is a trans-dimensional phenomenon that goes beyond the ontological essence of human nature. In fact, when we analyze the connections between the microcosm and the macrocosm, we perceive that human beings are not involved in chaos and arbitrariness, but belongs to the large network of interdependencies, complementarities and reciprocities that constitute life. The emergence of life on Earth, around 3,8 billion years ago, was a complex process of exceptional natural phenomena, inherent in all living systems. A process which is expressed through unlimited creativity: mutation, gene exchange, and symbiosis. From a cosmo-biological perspective, we can understand a new conceptual dimension of life, where all living beings share same basis of genetic code: the twenty amino-acids and four phosphatic bases. In fact, the diversity of living beings is caused by the combination of this cosmo-bio-genetic basis.
This trans-dimensional perspective has a deep ecological and spiritual sense for our worldview because the human evolutionary adventure is the latest stage of life on Earth. The modern human being is a vertebrate animal, mammal, belonging to the primates, which emerged 200,000 years ago. In recent centuries he has imposed its anthropocentric, industrial and capitalist vision to the detriment of Pachamama (and Indigenous goddess known as earth mother). We consume around 120% of the natural resources that Earth Mother regenerats annually. Our consumer behavior is immersed in a fatalistic dynamic with a destiny to climate change (deforestation, loss of biodiversity, ozone, etc.), and our own self-destruction as a species.
There is an urgent need to get beyond the cognitive fallacy that the mental structures of social Darwinism and capitalist postulates of the 19th century have historically constituted, because they only understand natural and social systems as warmongers and competitive processes whereby species diverge from each other. . ...more.
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