Working Towards Peace

WAGGGS and its Member Organizations strive to engender peace within communities. Working with external organizations on a national, regional and world level, WAGGGS supports projects which promote peace.

A full list of peace projects by Member Organizations is available here.

Building Peace Among Children

This project involved eleven different countries and it was funded by Soroptimist International. It began with a seminar in Rwanda in 2003 where two representatives from each country attended to gain peacebuilding skills. This was followed by individual projects in the participating countries. Read about some of the projects which have taken place below:

Girl Guides Association of Zambia

Project description:

Introducing Training of Trainers Workshop for 20 girls on peace building and conflict resolutions. Soroptimist International, through WAGGGS funded the Peace Building Training workshop, conducted at the Girls Guides Association of Zambia Headquarters in Lusaka from 29 April – 1 May 2004.

Participants:

24 young female refugees from Congo.

Objectives:

Peace building and conflict transformation skills among girls and young women
Increase the level of knowledge, awareness and understanding on the modes of transmission of HIV/AIDS and how young women can play an active role in the prevention of the pandemic.
Provide the girls with the opportunity of being part of the Guide family
To discuss the way forward

Conclusion:

The Peace Building training workshop was very successful workshop that met its objectives. The girls fully participated in all the session and contributed on the topics facilitated. It is hoped that the knowledge acquired will enable the participants to be confident in starting peer activities and that this workshop is not the end but an on going activity.

South Africa

Project description:

The Right to Live in Peace. The focus was to involve as many girls as possible to attend activities relating to living in peace. Project was launched in July in the Eastern Cape region

Objectives/focus:

Project focuses on HIV/AIDs and Peer education
Specific training on Peer education
Involvement of the community and boys in workshops especially other community based organisations and parents
Introducing the GGASA Peace Badge Challenge for Teddies, Brownies, Guides and Rangers

Conclusion:

The deputy mayor of Butterwoth, Councilor N Skelenge was very impressed with the initiative of the Guides. The presence of the UK Guides marked a significant contribution by Guiding across the oceans in the flight against HIV/AIDS and violence against women in South Africa. It was agreed by all that the launch of SIYACOCA has been very successful and the guiders were fired up to introduce the challenge in their own regions.

The Girl Guides Association of Zimbabwe

Project:

To feed and educate 100 homeless children for at least two years. To educate the people of Kensington and the children affected by conflicts. A seminar will be held at the time of feeding of the children by the Girl Guides Association of Zimbabwe. A teacher from one of the local schools will be invited to help educate the children at that time of hour on the dangers of life that they are facing.

Objective:

To lure non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in sponsoring such projects to motivate the people of Kensington to come together and stop conflict among themselves that force such situations to happen among children.
To educate children about the dangers of everyday life
To educate the Bulawayian people to preach love among other themselves.

Feedback:

The Nutresco Maheu is running smoothly. Children who are disadvantaged really appreciate the feeding scheme. Parents and guardians are thankful and are quite willing to assist during the preparation and feeding time of maheu.

So far the children have used 2350kgs of Nutresco Maheu. The Girl Guide Association delivers the maheu to the project area. Two hundred children are benefiting from this project.

To show their appreciation the children and community have written thank letters and draw pictures to show how healthy they are now.

Tanzania Girl Guides Association

Goal:

To raise the status of Peace and Harmony amoung 15 Children of The Kurasini Children’s Home.

Objective:

To train Young Adults as Peace ambassadors
To help children overcome a sense of insecurity
To raise the children’s awareness of the AIDS scourge
To raise the children’s awareness on drug abuse
Introduce methods of sustainability

Uganda Guides

This project is targeting children and women at grass root/community/household levels in both districts.

Uganda Girl Guides Association will use its structure to make a contribution through awareness on children and women’s rights, peer education in life skills, advocacy for gender mainstreaming and affirmation action. The Association will promote children and womens’s dignity at grassroots level especially in communities that have been affected by war.

Objective:

Peer education
Community Sensitization
Advocacy

Project:

Peace loving spirit in children.

Girl Kenya Girl Guides Association

Project description:

Building Peace and Recruiting Peace Ambassadors. The project involves training girls to become peace ambassadors to spread peace among the various schools they represent and within the camp.

Discuss the limitations or problems they will potentially face.

Assess how positive the project has had an impact to the community and what recommendations shall be applied to make it more effective.

Participants:

Identify and train 54 peace ambassadors.

Objectives:

Recruiting more children by the use of training manual and awarding the peace badges
Help with the monitoring and evaluating of the project
Recruit more ambassadors
Convey the peace messages through various arts for instance songs, poems, drawings and drama, etc

Sierra Leone

Objectives:

To raise awareness on peace building initiatives
To promote peace building through education and social activities
To establish a network of 50 peace ambassadors
To improve the quality of life of at least 115 children in especially difficult circumstances
Sustainable peace among children