18-Day Version Prepares Nonviolent Peaceforce for Pilot Project in Sri Lanka

by George Lakey

Training for Change, July 25,03

"Help us! Come help us!" Screams awakened the 16 training participants at 5am as "villagers" ran down the halls of the dorm.to start the first simulation. Soon Thai actors dressed as soldiers appeared, gruffly shouting orders and banging through rooms "searching for terrorists" within the village which had declared itself a peace zone. The simulation went for six hours as training participants, outnumbered by the local actors playing villagers, soldiers, and human rights activists tried to cope with the unfolding drama. Excitement alternated with a kind of nervous boredom as the unpredictable conflict unfolded. The participants' job: to learn how to provide nonviolent accompaniment to local people under threat so the locals themselves could act for peace and justice without being injured and killed.

The simulation was followed by a day and a half of debrief, including feedback from the actors themselves on what the participants did which most expanded the options of the villagers and made violence less likely from the soldiers.

Participants from six continents

The participants came to Thailand from ten countries to take the core training which Nonviolent Peaceforce asked Training for Change to lead.. The next step will be NP's in-country training in which participants will learn more about Sri Lankan culture, politics, economics, and mission-specific details. The intention of the core training is to provide a challenging, all-round knowledge base and set of skills for the four techniques of third party nonviolent intervention: accompaniment, monitoring/observing, interposition, and presence.

The trainers were Ouyporn Khaunkeaw (Thailand), Gerald Gomani (Zimbabwe), and George Lakey (USA).

Ethnic riots: the second simulation

In typical Sri Lankan fashion, a rumor of an attack by a member of one ethnic group against another in a nearby town triggered rising where the NP team is working. Over two dozen local Thai and Burmese actors challenged the ingenuity and spirits of the NP participants, burning tires, chasing away mothers from the market, blockading a health service truck, abducting a human rights worker, and throwing stones. In the first scene of the simulation NP was already at work with monitoring a checkpoint, accompanying threatened town leaders, and interviewing local citizens. The tension continued for hours before the trainers finally called a halt.

Again some of the most telling observations came from the actors, whose comments were translated as they reported to the training participants what did and didn't work. As it turned out, these comments fit exactly the theory of effective third party nonviolent intervention work (even though the actors hadn't taken the course!) and reinforced the day-by-day learning the participants were already doing. A typical day in the training



A typical day started for some with yoga at 6:30 and for all with after-breakfast choices of physical exercise or spiritual practice: all were expected to do some kind of physical exercise every other day, with the alternative day given to a half hour of one or another form of inner work.

The mornings were frequently given to theory: "What is nonviolent action? "Presence? Interposition? Political space? Deterrence theory? How does this work fit into the traditional categories of peacemaking/peacekeeping/peacebuilding? What are the historical antecedents of Nonviolent Peaceforce? How does lack of cultural sensitivitity prevent the effectiveness of teams?"

This theory work was done in an experiential style of learning, as was the entire training. The 18 days were virtually lecture-free, stemming from the pedagogical assumption now widely accepted in adult learning that, for maximum internalization of knowledge and deepest empowerment, participants need to learn through challenge and response.

The afternoons and evenings were typically given to skill-development: teamwork, decision-making, conflict work, handling fear, giving and receiving support, self-care, feedback, writing reports, making threat assessments, and so on.

There were no days off in the eighteen days, in order to give the participants a chance to refine their skills in handling stress and increasing their stamina. Participants got four evenings off. Where did the tools come from?

For a year and a half Training for Change researcher Daniel Hunter gathered training tools, concepts and activities from around the world used by a range of organizations which send their workers into harm's way to promote peace. Daniel and George Lakey, in the process of writing the core curriculum, found themselves also needing to invent a number of new tools.

The work by Training for Change on the curriculum received ongoing input and feedback from the International Training Committee of Nonviolent Peaceforce, which then adopted the curriculum for NP use in its New Delhi meeting in November02. Originally sketched to be a three-week training, Daniel Hunter and George Lakey modified it for NP's pilot project and Daniel came to the Chiang Mai event in order to document the actual implementation in July and to manage the evaluation of it. What's next for the curriculum?

In Training for Change's method of experiential education, after having an experience (such as the first run of a major curriculum) the learning comes from the reflection and debriefing of that experience. So TFC staff have been susbstantial time reflection and supervising an internal and external evaluation of the training in order to revise and improve the curriculum.

The evaluation included not only before-and-after tests (in the beginning and end of the training) and a mid-point evaluation, but also an independent evaluator, Dr. Rodney Napier, came to Chiang Mai and engaged in intensive interviews with all the participants. He expects to meet them early next year in the field in Sri Lanka and interview them again in light of their actual experience putting the training to work. The training team also did a two-day evaluation after the training was completed, harvesting hundreds of ideas for change of the curriculum for later use.

TFC plans to revise the curriculum and then make it generally available, especially to groups that work in the field such as Peace Brigades International and Christian Peacemaker Teams. Nonviolent Peaceforce has already expressed interest, as we had hoped, in using the curriculum in future trainings.

TFC wishes to thank the volunteers who assisted in the development and implementation of the training, TFC staff who supported the long process of creating it, NP's Sri Lanka Project Director William Knox who helped in Chiang Mai with both knowledge and support, and the funders who made possible the most extensively researched and multi-culturally-based training yet created for third party nonviolent intervention.

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