Project: "Language, ITC and Peace Resource Centre"

This project is the continuation of "Promoting Social Responsibility of Buddhist Clergy" started in 2003. Its aim was to promote power sharing as a mechanism to find a solution to ethnic conflict.

This year we worked with Buddhist clergy in Anuradhapura. The Buddhist monks organized themselves as a group and identified language and technology as a barrier to connect with minority groups as well as with the world. They requested CPBR to engender opportunities to learn Tamil, English, computer literacy, peacebuilding and conflict transformation. CPBR responded by setting up a Language/ICT/peace centre in the Anuradhapura district. The centre provided a space for the monks to gain a greater understanding of peacebuilding through training and developing language and information & communication technology.

Through the course of the project, 40 Buddhist monks attended language classes and 15 were able to communicate in Tamil. 150 monks and lay people took ITC training.

Achievements:

• " Acquiring new skills, enabled participants to build their confidence and be "exposed" to other point of views. They were able deal with the current world context. One of the feelings that had emerged at the beginning was of isolation with regards to what happens elsewhere. As direct feedback illustrates, participants felt empowered to engage in "different" types of conversations with other clergy of other religious communities (following democratic principles). At the end of the training, in fact, participants were comfortable to invite other clergies and youth groups from other religions to follow the same training courses they attended.
  
  
• " As the project came to an end, the seeds of further cross-community work were planted and multi-religious training and dialogue work has been planned for the next phase of this pilot.