Thursday, April 22, 2010

YOUTH FDEVELOPMENT FOR PEACE INITIATIVE (Y.D.P.I) 2ND WORKSHJOP ON PEACE EDUCATION:

Youth Development for Peace Initiative (Y.D.P.I)
2nd workshop on Peace education
:

Workshop facilitators :( Mr. Derek Opong of link computer university college East Legon Accra Ghana & Mr. Benjamin Sumo Jr. director of YDPI Buduburam Liberian Refugees camp Ghana)


Workshop sponsor by: Youth Development for Peace Initiative (YDPI)


Date: 11th April, 2010
Time: 2:00pm---4pm
Venue: (Y. D.P.I office; Buduburam Liberian refugees’ camp zone ‘8’

Workshop Opening Exercise:
On the 11th of April 2010; the Youth Development for Peace Initiative held her second workshop on peace, under the Theme:
BUILDING THE CAPACITIES OF OUR YOUTH TO FIGHT AGAINST VIOLENCE & ANGER!

The workshop started with an opening prayer by Mr. Me- key Gray; one of the participants;
The introduction of the program by Cllr. Vera A. Galley, of Second Chance Africa.org. WWW.secondchanceafrica.org
The welcome remarks & workshop purpose by the director of Y.D.P.I Mr. Benjamin Sumo Jr.

Introduction of the guest speaker Mr. Derek Opong of by Mr. Prince F. Wleh general secretary Y.D.P.I; Mr. Derek Opong, who started the program, with words of encouragement; told the group a very big thanks for their effort and courage to take on this world task…however; he added, the peace of Africa and the rest of the world today depends on we the Africans ourselves; so Y.D.P.I, should not give up; but continue to strive to build total peace in the minds of our people; while their reward await them….



TOPIC: Violence: what causes it and how can It Be Prevented?

What is violence?
Violence is defined as the expression of physical or verbal force against one’s self or another. Violence is a display of power or force, pure and simple.

What are the forms of violence?
We can identify that there are at least three forms of violence; physical, verbal and psychological.

Violence is oftentimes the fruit of anger. Anger manifests itself in different ways and sometimes it may choose not to manifest itself at all.

What is Anger?
Anger is a strong emotion / feeling directed towards a real or perceived threat or grievance. What this means is that first of all when we are angry, we feel confronted or challenged. The person or situation that is challenging us makes us hostile or aggressive. Anger is therefore a feeling that comes about a result of how we see or interpret a situation. Normally it manifests itself as a form of energy.

Sometimes anger may even be latent and unknown. Different people express anger in different way; we see it in the person who resents and may even be suspicious of people who are different from him. We see it in people who pick fights at the slightest instance. We even see it in people who may appear to be too timid.

How do we identify when we are bout to become violence? We all have a potential for violence and more often than not, it can be expressed as a hidden form of energy. Anger is energy. Energy is the ability to do work. It may not necessarily be good or bad, but it may just be work. We also see anger in paranoia, a fear that people are out to get you.
We can see anger sometimes gradually building as latent resentment. Sometimes we realize we get irritated more quickly over some other little things.

Again, some of us tend to take out our frustrations with life on the people, oftentimes those who cannot retaliate. Let us not deceive ourselves. This can often be very rewarding and very satisfying and this is the first step in becoming violent people (shake the Zulu).

We are the consequences of violence? We can all acknowledge that the effects of violence are more devastating than positive.

How can we avoid becoming violent? The first thing we need to do is we must be able to understand ourselves. One of the first things we need to do is we must be able to know the things that make us angry, and the conditions under which we are prone to anger. Once we can identify these things then we can protect ourselves form them.

In addition to this, we must also be careful of how we absorb other people’s anger. Sometimes, by association we can also become angry people. The bible gives us a typical example of this in how David’s own son Absalom stirred anger in people by creating resentment against him. The result was a coup, a countercoup and death.

We also need to be able to discuss our problems with people when we feel we are developing resentment. Do not hold resentment in you. When we find ourselves hating some people the simple solution is to get closer to them and we may actually appreciate them more.

We also need to review our communication methods. There are two aspects to communication; the first is the contextual message and the second is the lexical meaning. The interpretation we give to words is dependent on the meaning we give them.

Thirdly, we must learn to assimilate the things that other people say and always try to look out for the positives while being aware of the negatives.

Closing prayer: Mr. James Torh.
The end of the program.

Signed-------
Mr. Prince C.S.F. Wleh
Gen. Secretary YDPI

Approved---------
Mr. Sylvester Thomas
Team manager YDPI
Attested---------

Mr. Benjamin Sumo Jr.
Director YDPI
http://ydpi.blogspot.com/
Tel: +233-249-023-259

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