NARPI Announcement

For those of you who might have missed it, here was the announcement we sent to all NARPI partners, past participants, and friends. As always, if you have questions or submissions, please send them to admin@narpi.net! 

Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI) 
Hiroshima, Japan 
August 12-24, 2012

The second annual Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI) Summer Training is taking place from August 12 to 24 in Hiroshima, Japan. The two-week training will not only equip participants from around the region with peacebuilding skills for their work at home, but will also help to connect organizations and communities from across the region and beyond. Approximately 40 participants from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan and Taiwan will join the training, including students, NGO staff, education practitioners, religious leaders and more.

NARPI Director Lee Jae Young saw the need for this kind of training after his experience studying peacebuilding in the United States. “Northeast Asia has a long history of military exercises, but a rather short history of peace education. In this region, peace education, conflict resolution/transformation, and frameworks for conflict prevention are still new terms,” he shares. “Therefore NARPI is a small but important effort to transform the culture of militarization into a culture of peaceful coexistence and cooperation as a region.”

The NARPI Secretariat is based at the Korea Peacebuilding Institute in Seoul, and this second training was organized by a local Japan committee including individuals from the World Friendship Center (Hiroshima), Peace Boat, Transcend Japan, the Global Campaign for Peace Education Japan, Nonviolent Peaceforce Japan and the Japan Mennonite Christian Church Conference. The regional steering committee also includes representatives of Blue Banner (Ulaanbaatar), Korea Peace Foundation (Seoul), Maritime State University (Vladivostok), Peace in China (Sichuan), and the Taiwan Grassroots Alliance for Peace (Taipei).

Courses to take place in 2012 include practical, hands-on training in the following:
           Critical Understanding of Conflict and Peace Issues
           Trauma Awareness and Healing
           Community-Based Restorative Justice for Schools
           Theory and Practice of Peace Eduation
           Peacebuilding Skills
           Historical and Cultural Stories of Peace

Participants will also join a field trip for experiential learning to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum on August 17 where they will meet with Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) and on August 18 to Okunojima, the site of Japan's wartime chemical weapons development and now home to a peace museum. The first week of the training will take place at Aster Plaza in central Hiroshima, while the second week will be hosted by the Hiroshima YMCA, Yuki. Throughout the event, participants will have ample opportunity to not only build their practical peacebuilding skills but also for the unique change to meet and interact with peers from around the region – still characterised by tensions and lack of positive relations between states - to together build relationships, share ideas, and reflect on their experience.

NARPI is sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) Northeast Asia, the Asia Community Trust, and several group and individual donors.

The third annual NARPI Summer Training will be held in 2013 in another part of the region, supported by local partners and peacebuilders. The venue will rotate throughout Northeast Asia in order to make the training more accessible for people throughout the region.

For additional information please see www.narpi.net or email NARPI at admin@narpi.net.