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Indonesia
Useful approaches to
building child participation in
peace building
Peace building through education
in North Maluku
This innovative project explores new avenues
in peace building through helping war-torn
Muslim and Christian communities to focus
on their children’s education and creating safe
communities as a vehicle to foster postconflict
community stabilisation. Approved
for funding in late 2001 by a foreign
government donor and supported by private
donors, the project has three main
components:
• providing transitional education support for
IDP children (uniforms, books, supplies,
teacher support) and forming education
committees in IDP communities
• providing support for a trauma healing and
creative activities program, and
• facilitating a community communication
forum where conflict management skills
will be introduced in the context of
community discussion groups.
A fund for a “peace project” in each of the
21 communities to be targeted will help them
to track and celebrate their own progress
toward peace.
World Vision collaborates with UNICEF
and Save the Children UK in providing the
education supplies and training for teachers
and trauma support workers.
The Peace and Tolerance Magazine
project: A child-focused peace
education initiative in North
Maluku
The aim of the Peace and Tolerance Magazine
project is to nurture peace attitudes and skills
among war-affected school children in grades
4–6, and through the magazine – plus a
teacher’s supplement – to provide training,
curriculum and classroom activities for
students and teachers to develop conflict
management skills. It is assumed that the
magazine will circulate throughout the
community, and that teachers (as community
leaders) will develop capacities to influence
community conflict transformation processes.
The project will produce a 15-edition
curriculum over three years and will directly
target 10,500 school children and 350
teachers (130 to be intensively trained) in
115 schools in North Maluku. The three main
activities are:
• produce the magazine
• train teachers in its use, and
• provide follow-up support, including a midterm
teachers’ conference.
Under the leadership of the World Vision
project manager, a full-colour prototype of
the magazine called Harmonis has already
been developed and tested in Ambon, in
cooperation with the Salawaku Foundation,
which partnered with World Vision in a
completed alternative education project
there. The field test generated a high level of
enthusiasm for, and interest in, the magazine.
This project is designed to link directly with
the Peace Building Through Education in
North Maluku project, and will be a further
component in World Vision’s mutual
collaboration with Save the Children.
Programs in other contexts that reduce
risks to children in areas of conflict by
actively engaging with issues of reconciliation
and development can learn from Indonesia’s
experience. Lessons include:
1. Effective “special” projects with a peace
building purpose can be incorporated into
existing community work without high
costs when designed with long-term
strategy and low overheads in mind.
2. Community development project designs
have the capacity to support peace
building processes that lead to increased
trust and a reduction of violence.
3. Physical “connecting” projects, such as
road building, enhanced with peace
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