February 27, 2019 – Since last summer, the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI) – in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – has worked to foster peace and reconciliation at the Protection of Civilians (PoC) site in Juba, South Sudan. Through twice-monthly “Peace Engagement Days,” which aim to engage the camp community in peacebuilding activities, PoC site residents have come together for all-day sports-based events. This has offered the community a forum within which to come together and discuss important issues and its leaders with a platform from which to disseminate messages of forgiveness and connection.
The “Peace Engagement Days” are part of our Peace Through Sports program, through which WPDI organizes sports activities for peacebuilding and psycho-social support. The program includes trainings combined with various workshops as well as games and tournaments, including those featured in this article. The aim is, therefore, both to educate and empower young people and to engage the wider community and improve social cohesion among the individuals and the groups at the site. The program is a unique opportunity for youths and elders to hold discussions or community dialogues on issues related to their lives as camp residents or to the broader framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, such as gender-based violence or sexually-transmitted diseases.
In the past couple of months, the PoC site hosted 10 of these Peace Engagement Day events, directly reaching 4,669 beneficiaries. In addition to the football matches, dialogue topics have included the roles women can play in peacebuilding, how forgiveness and reconciliation can lead to more peaceful communities, and what would constitute a “just society”. The themes have all proved widely popular and many participants have confessed to having learned a lot on issues with so many ramifications in their daily lives.
These Peace Engagement Days illustrate the value of engaging camp residents in a creative and meaningful way. Thousands of site residents have been positively impacted by our partnership with USAID and we look forward to continuing to work closely with them in the months and years ahead.