Four African leaders to join Alliance peace programme
20 April 2012
Four young African leaders will join Anglican peacebuilders from around the world to take part in a high level Anglican Alliance workshop in the UK in July.
Two young men and two young women from Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Zimbabwe have been selected to take part in the Anglican Alliance’s flagship workshop on peace and reconciliation which will include a programme in London and Coventry, as well as visits to dioceses affected by conflict in the UK.
Isaac Muhindo Kivikyavo from Democratic Republic of Congo, Dorcas Anyier Aguer from the newly independent South Sudan, and Tinashe Mukona and Tanyaradzwa Mufandaedza from Zimbabwe will join counterparts from Asia and Latin America in the UK in July.
Each has demonstrated huge commitment to resolving conflict in their communities and has been selected through an impartial process after a rigorous and demanding application procedure. Many young people from Africa applied for the Exchange and it will respond to a clear desire for training in peacebuilding among young people in the region.
Isaac, aged twenty-eight, is a councillor in the Youth department at St Andrew’s Cathedral in North Kivu and a lecturer at Université Catholique du Graben. Dorcas, also twenty-eight, is studying for a degree in Public Administration and has previously worked on the transitional arrangements in two states in her home country of South Sudan in the run up to independence. She hopes to use the Exchange as a platform to win Anglican support for efforts to increase female participation in peacebuilding and public life.
Tinashe, twenty-four, and Tanyaradzwa, twenty, are both active in their youth group in the Diocese of Manicaland, Zimbabwe. Tinashe has experience working with vulnerable and marginalised people, providing support to street children and the elderly. Tanyaradzwa is also a long time volunteer and has a particular interest in the problem of the easy availability of small and light weapons, which is a problem in her country.
The ten day programme, The Peacebuilders’ Exchange: Transforming Conflict, Changing Lives, is designed to develop the peacebuilding skills of young Anglican leaders. Run in conjunction with the Community of the Cross of Nails, it will explore the challenge of conflict as a barrier to pro-poor development and allow participants to share examples of best practice in conflict transformation across the Anglican Communion.
It’s the first workshop of its type to bring together young people from across the developing world and Europe and takes forward the commitment from the Anglican Alliance’s global consultation to put peace and reconciliation at the heart of its work. The programme will involve work in London and Coventry, and will also involve visits to some of the communities damaged last year’s riots in the UK.
Applications for Asia and Latin America will soon close and participants from these areas will be announced over the next few weeks.
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