Planting Seeds of Nonviolence in Sri Lanka It must be said that at times the pain of Sri Lanka feels overwhelming. Minor or major moves towards even a semblance of discussion and dialogue between warring factions often become lightning rods for a plethora of mixed interests. The fears, mistrusts, anxieties and poison of history are deeply rooted, and many are those who pick at the scars of recent battles, seemingly ignorant of their roles in actively helping the situation to continue to fester, at the cost of ever-increasing human loss and suffering. In this setting, Quaker Peace & Service (QPS) maintains a small office and a Quaker representative. I have served as that representative since March 1991. Part of my responsibilities include a quasi-diplomatic function: that of developing and maintaining contacts and relationships with government, political, labour and religious leaders, as well as non-governmental organisations, in order to find ways in which Quakers might assist in the search for peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. I am also responsible for searching out and developing practical programmes that can assist this overall objective. When I arrived in Sri Lanka, QPS had already spent two years giving nonviolent conflict resolution workshops to a variety of audiences: senior civil servants, fisherfolk, Buddhist monks, and teachers. Staff were wondering about their effect, however, and organised follow-up was limited by time and resource constraints, as well as a sense that new groups should be exposed to the workshops. As I made the rounds of local organisations, I found that there continued to be interest in having nonviolent conflict-resolution workshops. At the same time, however, I felt strongly that QPS should no longer be providing these workshops, but instead empowering local people to do their own workshops. From this developed a six month programme to train local facilitators of nonviolent conflict resolution workshops. By chance Di Bretherton, an Australian Quaker who is experienced in giving nonviolence workshops, was in Sri Lanka in May 1991. She was on a short assignment training people to counsel workers returning from, and suffering from, the trauma of the Gulf war. We met, and the idea of her coming back to Sri Lanka to do a training for facilitators was seeded. Over the next few months the idea sprouted and was nurtured, culminating in a five-day residential workshop held in January in Kandy at a retreat centre. Organisations invited to participate in the workshop were chosen on the basis of their commitment to nonviolence and social justice, for the fact that they were already operating at a grass roots level, and because they had a group of people to whom they could offer workshops after the training. Representatives of fifteen organisations attended the initial five-day workshop. They were a mix of Tamils and Sinhalese and one Muslim. They ranged in age from twenty-three to seventy years. There were eleven men and four women. They were Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim: All worked closely with the people: with refugees, with plantation workers, with village people, with youth, with unemployed, with orphans. They came from Colombo, from Kandy and from Jaffna, and their work took them all over the country. They left the workshop excited and feeling part of a newly-formed community. The sharing between them had a deep effect. Two people, one a Tamil living with two Sinhala, said that while they were open to the other ethnic community, they had, through the experience of the workshop, developed a trust for the other they had never known before. Who knows what effect such deep changes can have? Thoughts of how to use the training were discussed. Two of the participants agreed jointly to carry out a workshop among refugees in Colombo. Some participants spoke of ways that people in the south could communicate and build relationship with those in the besieged northern Jaffna Peninsula: such as by letter-writing and a visit by Buddhist monks. Many saw, as a positive factor in the workshop, the silent worship and meditation sessions at the start of each day, the guided meditations after lunch, and the walking meditations at the close of the aftenoons. People spoke positively of being in touch with their inner being and learning to listen to themselves, and of the effect on conflict resolution this can give. The five day residential workshop is the foundation of our training programme. This is followed by four one-day workshops in Colombo spread out over a two-month period. These workshops are aimed at giving people experience in facilitating - and becoming more deeply exposed to - the variety of exercises that can be used in a nonviolence workshop. After this we are encouraging participants to conduct a small workshop with their own group of people so that learning is put into immediate practice. To help them over any initial lack of self-confidence, QPS is providing a trained staff person to support them in this first workshop. We are also encouraging them to work in pairs when facilitating a workshop. This provides a mutual support and feedback system. Given that the people trained are from different groups, working in pairs could provide a rich cross-pollination of ideas between organisations, exposing people to new situations and experiences they might not otherwise receive. To supplement the active training of this QPS programme, we are currently developing a nonviolent conflict resolution workbook based on QPS' two years experience of giving workshops in Sri Lanka which will be translated into Tamil and Sinhala. We are also encouraging the future facilitators to set up a support group amongst themselves which QPS will resource and participate in, but not lead. The support group could assist discussion of practical concerns dealing with organising workshops, it could explore assumptions and possible methods of nonviolence in action, it could share new resources and forge international links and support, and it could serve as a vehicle for growth through the search for how the spirit and methods of nonviolence can be affirmed more deeply and consciously in personal lives, in workplaces and in the cultures of Sri Lanka. QPS is also trying to build up a library of books and periodicals on nonviolence than can be borrowed and used. It feels appropriate to end with a poem that one of the participants in the five-day workshop shared with us. It is written by a thirteen year-old girl from an unidentified war torn country: I had a box of colours Shining bright and bold I had a box of colours Some warm some very cold I see no red for the blood of wounds I had no black for the orphans' grief I had no white for dead faces and hands I had no yellow for burning sands But I had orange for the joy of life And I had green for buds and nests I had blue for bright clear skies I had pink for dreams and rest I sat down and painted PEACE. Next time I feel overwhelmed with the pain of Sri Lanka, I will remember the wisdom of this 13 year-old and continue to paint. Phil Esmonde Reprinted from The Friend, 28 February 1992.