An enriching youth field expereince as a facilitator (section1)

It was an unforgettable field experience I had with the youth as a facilitator in 2013. We often rely on funds to make our social projects more successful, but the below field experience was one that heavily depended on the communities' efforts to do something for their own good, whereas, social organizations often try to carry out initiatives that support the community in direct means. So, I find it to be a unique experience that will continue to inspire me to carry out grassroots level work based on some of the lessons learnt on the ground. Hope you enjoy reading my story!

Background

On 23 -25 June 2013 Centre for Peace Building and Reconciliation (CPBR) in collaboration with NEXT-GEN¹ organized their first ever environmental workshop. It was an interactive experimental and experiential learning workshop that brought nearly 43 youth from six local villages to Vahamalgollawa to explore environmental issues affecting an individual, community and the world at large and find solutions together by transforming our lives to being eco- friendly. The workshop is an introduction to a comprehensive curriculum, called Eco village Design Education (EDE) which usually takes 4 weeks to cover, and is a full-time, residential program. The EDE is taught in many countries all over the world.

1 Next Generation of Ecovillages –Next GEN is creating a network that empowers youth who, alongside their elders, can be effective architects and authors of a sustainable and just world.  http://gen.ecovillage.org/index.php/about-gen/vision-mission.html

The youth belong to six communities that represented different ethnicity, religion and minorities groups of Thirikkovil, Vahamangollawa, Siripura, Hatton, Batticaloa and Galle. CPBR is an organization that always attempts to do things different, based on this long standing phenomenon it wanted to serve the most impressionable group of citizens in the country, the youth with a unique learning and sharing experience, which will ultimately help them become socially responsible and creative change agents in the community and contribute towards the development of the nation. We realized that the youth today are more wired up, plugged in, worldly and savvy than ever and most care deeply about the threats facing their environment, and are committed to making difference. Although they want to go green, they do not know how to

be environmentally conscious. Saving the planet and being more eco-friendly are issues that everyone could make an effort to contribute to, and we wanted to help these youth to find out how. We believe that small things can make a huge difference. We wanted everyone to realize that anyone doesn’t have to give up everything that he likes and are used to. Instead start it small by being aware about things that they can substitute that won't use as much energy or resources as the things they are currently using; doing this can lower their impact without causing them to lower their lifestyle.

In this fast paced, modern society, it can be a daunting task to find ways to live greener and conserve our environmental resources. So, CPBR was looking for ways and means to support the youth’s quest to go green by introducing creative ways to reduce one’s carbon footprint and live a more ecologically friendly lifestyle. On top of all this, being a peace building organization through relationship building, CPBR wants to experiment with this new process of encouraging and enabling environmental cooperation among the Singhalese, Tamil and Muslim communities and other minority interest groups by bringing them together to manage environmental resources that will ultimately lead to change of attitudes, behaviors and insecurities and build peaceful relationships between hostile parties. The research findings by the world watch organization throws an extensive look at how the management of natural resources and environmental change in communities support conflict transformation. The absence of effective governance, ability to manage natural resources, disputes related to inequitable wealth sharing and environmental degradation and dependence on a limited set of essential commodities due to scarcity of resources all are likely to contribute to the outbreak of a violent conflict. Moreover, violent conflict often leaves all parties to a conflict with a shared legacy of pollution and environmental degradation. This youth initiative by CPBR and follow-up events will create the necessary ground work to help promote peace throughout the conflict cycle by supporting conflict prevention before community issues and disputes turn violent, by addressing the root causes of instability and space for dialogue between hostile parties to help reduce and resolve violent disputes and by enabling more effective peace building and reconciliation between divided groups in a post-conflict setting. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for integrating environmental contributions to conflict and instability into the U.N.’s conflict prevention strategy and the deliberations of his High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change. Overall, CPBR’s collaboration with NEXT-GEN strive to work to discover ways in which more effective natural resource management can contribute to conflict prevention and management and peace building processes < http://www.worldwatch.org/node/80>.

CPBR undertook community consultations among its’ groups and a residential four day forum in 2011 with focus group leaders, Ms. Mary Rose , volunteer from United States of America and members of funding organizations. At the forum they all decided on the Motto " GREEN VILLAGE: QUALITY LIFE". This also focuses on the following thematic Areas:

- Education and Peacebuilding

- ATR and PB

- Environment and PB

- Religion and PB

- Development and PB

For next 5 years (from 2012 - 2016)

Moreover, religious and community leaders met in December 2012 in kalmunai . They all decided on a theme to direct CPBR initiatives for the next 5-10 years. Accommodating all the aspects that was highlighted under thematic areas "Heal the Body : HEAL the Soul : Heal the Earth " was selected. Based on this organizational direction. Our Director, and youth consultant Dishani jayaweera inspired by this theme started her journey to link it to all activities carried out by the CPBR team.

Dishani, our youth consultant paid a visit with Trudy Juriansz, the representative of GEN for Sri Lanka to Thailand for a workshop by mother earth on sustainable development that included many earth building activities as natural building to permaculture.

The outcome of all their experiences was to transform their home communities into an eco- friendly village and find more ways to live a simpler, self-reliant lifestyle by growing organic food, building their own natural homes, and experimenting with low tech appropriate technologies. They wanted to start this off with the youth group envisioning a change in the hierarchical power structures that always encouraged the elderly community for information and direction. Instead they wanted the minorities and youth to be heard and believed that these groups will guide the rest towards building an eco-village. After experimenting with various groups for the past several years, they find this approach to be the most effective. The eco- workshop in Wahamangollawa as well as the natural building project, the future youth hub in Siri Pura that is still underway will serve as the foundation stone of this whole process.

When trying to think of a place to organize this youth program, the only location that came into Dishani’s mind was Wahamangollawa and everyone else agreed to it as the place was what would ideally suit for a workshop of this caliber. 

Wahamongallwa is a rural village situated 400 miles away from Anuradhapura City and is a home for farming and cultivation. A person who we knew would be generous enough to accept our humble invitation to host this program in his village within a limited time framework is no other than Mr. Hemapala and his wife. Mr. Hemapala is a native of Anuradhapura, a humble organic farmer, an ardent believer in and proponent of organic, sustainable living, and a gently fierce defender of his region’s traditional culture. His genuine interest to promote these things inspired him to create space for CPBR and these youth groups at his house- typically a refuge for learning about, practicing, and enjoying wholesome and sustainable living. His house was a humble hut tucked in a beautiful garden at the end of a scenic road winding through dry foliage and verdant rice fields, with clean air pristine water. The view from his house is spectacular. We knew that the youth not only will learn the culture embedded in the surroundings of this adobe housing, but also eat delicious Sri Lankan organic food right from Mr. Hemapala’s home gardens. The participants also will have ample space to admire the gardening and environmental practices of his village’s master craftsmen and go trekking in paddy fields and enjoy the sunset.

The Eco workshop looked at inspiring Sri Lankan youth‘s imaginations and creativity to play a leading role in addressing the need for a more stable and sustainable planet by being aware of climate change, global warming crisis and sustainable living practices and be empowered and mobilized to act as catalysts to effect positive change in their communities by embracing principles of “go green”. This workshop attempts to promote the adoption of environmental practices, such as recycling, reuse, water and energy conservation among youth by working closely with them and providing support and training they need to move towards better environmental practices.

The purpose of this report is to share the experiences and knowledge gained through this project with others and to motivate them to deal with similar social work. This is a written document that reports how well this project utilized the given resources and succeeded in achieving its major objectives. This report describes all the programs that were conducted in the workshop, the challenges and difficulties the students faced during the fieldwork and how they managed those problems, what they learnt and how they successfully achieved the goals of the project.

June 22

Anyone wouldn’t have come up with a more fulfilling place than Wahamangollawa, an ideal place to start sharing skills and ideas behind an ecologically sustainable and socially rewarding lifestyle with others. I was taken with the place rather quickly and knew that this was the change I wanted in my life. My own quest towards a more low impact lifestyle in a community setting was just beginning. Indeed, this was the first and single most important step I made. Living and learning in the community of Wahamnogallawa not only allowed us to apply all that we have learned, but it also gave us a unique opportunity to deepen our knowledge, through direct experience, of what it means to live sustainably. This certainly gave all of us a solid educational foundation upon which to enter the field of sustainability; moreover, the encouragement of inner growth that we experienced was immeasurable.

Wahamangollawa is a small rural village that consists of about one thousand families, yet only a fraction of them actually lived in the suburbs of Mr. Hemapala’s house, and have got involved with activities carried out by CPBR, while others live in surrounding towns as Rambawwa, Madawachiya. It was not until we as the staff at CPBR pursued an interest in getting to know the local whereabouts of the Wahamangollawa community to fulfill the needs for this workshop, that we really realized the extent of the reach and complexity of it all. The community grows much of its own produce, and has a community grocery store, while many traditional cooking, housekeeping and farming practices were observed. Despite the obvious day to day ways in which people in this community live sustainably through sharing and conserving resources, I realized the many underlying processes involved in creating a sustainable community. The interests of the parent to indulge their children in a vocation, use of old grind tools for meal preparations, installation of natural ventilation systems are among the many found in this community. Observing and being a part of the very complex group dynamics of this community was definitely one of the greatest tangible learning experiences for all of us, and being able to integrate what we were learning at the workshop and by looking at the lives of the Wahamangollawa citizens into our own community life experiences made the learning process all the more relevant and dynamic. This workshop

also brings us to the second greatest aspect of our learning experience at Wahamangollawa, which was the actual process by which we learned. There were forty three of us in the program. We lived together in the community, ate community meals together, and learned together. We learnt four dimensions in the Eco Village and sustainable development curriculum (Ecological, Worldview, Sociological and cultural) with our three facilitators Tom, Om and Trudy who guided us through our living and learning experience. Our learning was very much focused on the process of how we learned, rather than receiving information. We learned through experience. We traveled on field trips to locations near and far and each of us promised at the end of the workshop to volunteer to work at Mr. Hemapala’s garden or transform our own communities to being an Eco Village.

All the while, we were engaged in learning about ourselves and our group dynamics as we, forty three strong and inspired females and males formed into a community within Whamangollawa as a eco team, and a part of, the larger community of Sri Lanka. Truly, this unique learning experience allowed us to grow in ways we never imagined and it will forever be a part of who each of us are today as it has deeply inspired our passions and sense of direction in life. I now hold the highest gratitude to CPBR, the Wahamangollawa Community, and, of course, Next-Gen program for allowing each and everyone one of us this experience. I now feel even more so that I have a wonderful balance of the knowledge and experience needed to successfully meet the goals of my job and provide space for these youth to act on what they had promised in Wahamngollawa.