Problem Solving for 200 Traditional Leaders

Since January 2015 Ba Futuru's Consolidating Peace and Democracy Initiative has undertaken twenty-six (26) 5-day trainings on conflict resolution, gender-based violence and civic education for 673 (401 Male and 272 Female) traditional leaders, youth, NGO workers and police empowering them with enhanced knowledge and skills. This means we only have 4 trainings left and we will have completed at 30 trainings in this 3-year project.

After being involved in the training, the participants were asked about how it changed them:

In each Timorese community there is a traditional leader called a “Lia Nian” (that can be literally translated as storyteller) whose role in the community is to perform local ceremonies and resolve disputes.

 One 56-year-old male storyteller reported: “I am really happy because this training is very unique, being facilitated by Timorese people. I have participated in many training sessions that were facilitated by foreigners and a translator and sometimes I did not understand them well.  This training was easy for me to understand. The lessons I have learned interested me very much as a storyteller that has worked within my community for ten years.  This is my first time to learn specific things helping me to gain a deep understanding of conflict resolution and gender-based violence. The lessons I learned will help me and my community resolve conflicts without violence. This is important to me, and I will share the information with youth and everyone in my community.”   

Another 67-year-old male community leader stated: “I think this five day training was useful. We learnt new lessons and knowledge on how to resolve the conflict often occurring in my community. The training had a good quality training manual that we can use practically to increase our knowledge on how to moderate problems in our village without the use of violence. I will share the information I learnt in the training in the next community meeting with members of my community who didn’t participate.”

We still need additional support for the following 4 trainings, so please spread the word about this project to your friends who might be interested in supporting this important work!