Aktivitäten
09. September 2009
Zwei Schülerinnen der DPS Schule in Delhi, die Mitglieder bei Schools Against Violent Extremism sind.
SAVE India - Schools Against Violent Extremism
Spreading the Message
SAVE is the response to potential and actual global violence and aims to produce a positive climate of change in local societies. This new movements seeks to equip women for the challenges posed by political and religious radical efforts.
With a mandate to provide a platform for schools to air their views on the increase in violent extremism and to encourage them to effectively contribute to building a peaceful environment, we held our first workshop in the Delhi Public School (DPS) RK Puram, which is recognized as a progressive school in Delhi. DPS is run by the Delhi Public School Society, a not-for-profit organization that is responsible for over 100 schools and boasts an enrollment of over 200,000 children in India and the Gulf region.
SAVE India held a workshop with students and teachers, who led a varied discussion and which concluded with each of the 20 participants’ thoughts on what they could do to make a difference. Their sincere commitments to fight violent extremism were documented in a film.
The India office made copies of the film and sent them to over 100 schools in Lucknow, Delhi and Mumbai with a letter inviting the schools to join the SAVE campaign. The response has been overwhelming. A number of schools have shown interest in SAVE and want to be a part of this project.
To achieve the objectives of this initiative, we plan to make SAVE popular in schools all over the country. SAVE India proposes to channel the students’ and teachers’ energies toward building bridges of peace within various communities and society. We plan to organize workshops with the new schools’ teachers and students, beginning in late September/early October. The focus will be on building social skills to cope with terror and to help in conflict resolution. We will concentrate our efforts on developing a peace curriculum with the help of the teachers and making it a part of the regular curriculum and the schools’ other activities.
By Archana Kapoor
