Avoid violence - Peace Council urges SHS students
The National Peace Council (NPC) is carrying out peace education campaigns in senior high schools (SHSs) to consolidate its peacebuilding efforts.
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The decision came in the wake of SHS students resorting to destruction of school properties, physical and verbal attacks on teachers, colleagues, opinion leaders, among others, in the expression of their displeasures.
Last Friday, the NPC engaged the St Thomas Aquinas SHS students on the theme: “Promoting tolerance and peaceful coexistence in SHSs”.
In a statement, the Director of Capacity Development and Outreach of the NPC, Janet Sarney-Kuma, reiterated the inevitability of conflict in human existence.
She, however, said when managed well, conflict could reduce its escalation into brutalities, adding that the maintenance of peace was the responsibility of both the young and the old, particularly the young.
“This is because the youth are mostly the vehicle for the propagation of violence,” she stated.
Peace clubs
The director said it was the plan of the NPC to create peace clubs in SHSs, however, “this project will require some funding to create, manage and sustain them”.
She, therefore, called on corporate institutions to support the enviable initiative in the short to the long term.
“The clubs will help imbibe the tenets of peacebuilding, management, and resolution of conflicts in the youth for a peaceful nation,” she said.
The students were taken through the definitions of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, conflicts, and the common causes of conflict.
Additionally, students were introduced to the staircase model of conflict dynamics, escalating and de-escalating behaviours, as well as alternative dispute resolution (ADR).
In a closing remark, the Headmaster of the school, Paul Amoasi Baidoo, expressed appreciation to the NPC for such an insightful engagement.
He charged his students to be agents of peace wherever they found themselves henceforth.
