SAP Stories 2022
Amplifying the Unheard Voices of Marginalized Youth and Connect the Disconnect
The ALLY Fellows finally had a chance to gather together for the first time in June 2022. After online training and in-person meetings only at the national level, the ALLY Policy Dissemination event on 27 June marked an important step in ALLY’s goal to create a regional network of youth peacebuilders. With the fellows finally together in one place, they met with policymakers to advocate to make such gatherings a more common occurrence.
As part of ALLY’s ongoing regional and national level advocacy work, fellows engaged with policymakers in attendance at the ALLY Policy Dissemination. Hameeda Syed, Amna Khan, Faria Rahman, and Najia Nuray met with a representative from the European Union, where they drew from their experience implementing SAPs to advocate for structures to institutionalize youth peacebuilding in South Asia.
4 ALLY Fellows meet with the EU Delegation in Thailand
The four ALLY fellows who met with the EU are involved in several SAPs focused on establishing structures for sustainable participation of youth in governance and peacebuilding, something that is sorely lacking in a field where opportunities appear all too infrequently. Najia and Hameeda are involved in Paw Kha and Dignity in Difference, two SAPs detailed in previous stories. Amna and Faria have been involved in Connect the Disconnect and Amplifying the Unheard Voices of Marginalized Youth (AUVMY), respectively, two SAPs providing youth the training and tools to practice peacebuilding in their daily lives.
Connect the Disconnect successfully engaged over 50 Madrasa students in 2021 with four days of online engagement and a one-day in-person event for young people in Pakistan to generate discourse around peace and conflict resolutions. Building on their work, five fellows are establishing School Peace Committees in schools to deal with the trauma of conflicts and report discriminatory behaviors by teachers, students, or administration.
Each peace committee will assist the students to reduce stress and hate developed due to conflicts and prejudice. Significant examples of the traumatic experiences can be seen in the sectarian hatred in Pakistan that is being fed to children within the school system to promote discriminatory behaviors. The undealt trauma and conflict result in frustration, aggression, and extremism towards each other in the later stages.
The SAP has already established a Peace Committee in one school as a pilot project and fellows are documenting its impact for advocacy with other stakeholders, such as the engagements conducted during the ALLY Policy Dissemination in Bangkok. Faria, a member of AUVMY was also able to use her SAP as a practical example of the services governments can provide youth living and working in conflict areas.
Just as Connect the Disconnect works with students experiencing trauma and discrimination, the first phase of AUVMY in 2021 generates evidence on how youth from marginalized communities face various types of behavioral discrimination and racism. Using the information they gained in phase one, three fellows are training youth in the Chittagong Hills Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh on key factors of peacebuilding, violent extremism, and social cohesion, while also developing a referral pathway to mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services provided by the Bangladeshi government. The youth involved are gaining practical support in the form of a referral pathway for existing MHPSS services so they can always seek MHPSS support. The direct 20 beneficiaries will get a printed copy of the referral pathway and through the Facebook page, 1000 indirect beneficiaries will be able to download the online version of it.
The ALLY fellows who engaged with policymakers in their countries, at the SAARC engagement in Nepal in May 2022, and the Policy Dissemination in Bangkok in June 2022 all have at least one thing in common: though their advocacy may request increased support, they do so with the real world examples of what that support looks like and the impact it can have on those facing violent extremism in their own communities.
Meanwhile, their SAP work continues. AUVMY and Connect the Disconnect’s social media pages (AUVMY Facebook and Connect the Disconnect Facebook) are excellent resources for young peacebuilders who wish to learn about current issues, training, and other relevant news. For more information about all ALLY advocacy work, please follow the Network Asia Facebook and Twitter pages.
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