There is a kind of spirit in the choice to sit with someone different from us - different beliefs, different background, different social and/or economic status - and deciding to look away from that difference to ignore it in this fractured world. In the presence of a noisy quagmire of moral decay, this spirit is not something that could be harvested in each generation so easily; it has to be cultivated, nurtured, practised, and passed down to others.
So when, after years of social and political struggles, communities became guarded towards one another, and social trust has weakened even further, growing long-standing divisions into these gaps, a systemic search for the spirit became imperative.
For more than a decade, the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ) of the BRAC University has focused on cultivating that spirit purposefully, gradually, and across communities. It is a practice that emerged not only in classrooms, but also in the regular lives where people socialise, conflict, and choose - often against their better judgment - to remain in the space together.
Walking the trail, in 2013, CPJ launched a peacebuilding framework in Bangladesh - a process that involves creating social structures to develop dialogue and enable meaningful conversations to prevent and decrease the likelihood of future conflict. The success of this work led CPJ to implement its best-known community-based program, the Peace Café.
Initially, the Peace Café initiative created inclusive environments that are particularly safe for young women to share their thoughts on social tensions, discuss their stories, and create local support among the community. Young women trained as Peace Ambassadors through this program were able to develop and execute their own community development plans with the help of starter funds.
Gradually, the program, alongside involving young men too, provided open dialogue opportunities to engage the general public in conversations about coexistence, rights, and identity, so there was respect for everyone’s right to be present in a given environment. By doing this, the youth were given the right skills, knowledge, and safe environments to develop confidence in these areas; this creates a ripple effect throughout the community, changing social norms and reducing conflict whilst building strong communities.
What no policy alone can build is the ability of ordinary people to live and work across their differences. It grows in dialogue, shared experience, and the deliberate choice to stay in a relationship with someone who does not share your background or belief
Down the line, currently, the PAHELA (Peace and Harmony Enhancement through Learning and Assessment) project is a logical extension of CPJ’s existing Program Development Methodology (PDM), which has been evolving, tested, and refined over many years. The foundation for this methodology is the belief that sustainable peace cannot be achieved through directives imposed by higher authorities but rather through a process of structured dialogue, shared experience, and community ownership.
PAHELA continues to carry on the legacy of the Peace Café through the new and larger launch of this initiative, grounded in CPJ’s established peacebuilding framework, validated by years of field experience, and revised and reshaped with thousands of community voices. Through PAHELA, 120 young champions from 11 districts of the Chattogram division will be trained and supported to develop community-based peace initiatives, who will later on establish 11 Peace Cafés in their respective districts.
In the initiative supported by the Nagorikata: Civic Engagement Fund (CEF) Programme, SURGE Bangladesh is a local partner in the implementing consortium. The consortium will carry out training and research activities involving the youth from the 11 districts to study the status quo and establish mechanisms for long-term peacebuilding in the said areas.
Within a short span of time, the programme has already brought together young people from various life experiences in a shared effort to foster peace, understanding/empathy, inclusion, and build unity among the social fabric of the community they live in.
As part of the core curriculum, participants are studying topics including pluralism, diversity, identity, social dynamics, human rights, interfaith cooperation, ethical leadership, community resilience, and meaning, as well as the foundational concepts for establishing peace.
Training is being delivered to participants in both normative ways and through opportunities for hands-on learning using practical tools, including stakeholder mapping for creating Community Action Project(s), facilitating Focus Group Discussions, and Participatory Research.
What no policy alone can build is the ability of ordinary people to live and work across their differences. It grows in dialogue, shared experience, and the deliberate choice to stay in a relationship with someone who does not share your background or belief—for a common, collective good. This is the work that CPJ has strived to accomplish since its inception. Undoubtedly, the value of this work today is greater than ever in Bangladesh.
* Faisal Al Islam, Junior Research Associate, CPJ, BRAC University
* Md Mahbub-Ul-Haque, Junior Research Associate, CPJ, BRAC University
* Prama Dewan, Programme Assistant, CPJ, BRAC University