Oiseau de la Paix (Bird of Peace) was created by Anthony Fabrice Kettemalet, a school teacher and human rights activist (read more about Anthony ). He was trained in conflict transformation by the Ministry of American Baptist Church in Nigeria. Its objective is to use education as a way to spread peace among the young people of CAR.

It goals are to:

Train school teachers in conflict transformation and mediation

Oiseau de la Paix helps prevent conflict by helping school teachers to be roles model of peace, understanding and acceptance of others; to provide inspiration for their students; and help them to reproduce the way they speak and act at school elsewhere.

Raise awareness among young people of nonviolence

Oiseau de la Paix gives a voice to young people through art by using storytelling and drawing. Performed in the national language, Sango, in order to maximise participation, this activity has a big focus on peacebuilding and conflict prevention. The organisation believes that young people in CAR often do not have the space to express their feelings about losing their relatives and friends to conflict. Oiseau de la Paix offers this space, in which they are free to tell their story. It is a way to offer psychological support to those young people, to sensitise them to nonviolence, to create a better and peaceful future and to create active agents of peace in the future.

At an ODLP mediation workshop

Support youth organisation by providing training

Many youth organisations involved in peacebuilding and conflict prevention have never had access to training. They work with instinct and goodwill. Oiseau de la Paix offer training to enhance their ability to do so. Young people will have to be involved to build long-term peace in CAR, and Oiseau de la Paix offers them that opportunity. Among its projects are:

• Workshops with teachers on the pedagogy of conflict transformation, Bangui: The project teaches the basics of conflict transformation and how teachers can include those techniques in their work with students.
• Workshops with pupils on nonviolence - 50 students, Bangui: The reach of the project is to help students tell their story and give their ideas on how they can promote nonviolence at school, in their community and in their family.
• Workshops with youth organisations on how to lead mediation - five organisations, Bangui: Mediation is the big trend among youth organisations in CAR but most of them lack sufficient training. Mediation is an art that requires skill, patience and neutrality. This project has helped to increase the capacity of different organisations to lead on the training and implementation of mediation.

Major achievements:

1. Training teachers in new methods to teach conflict transformation at school.
2. Mobilising, raising awareness in creating the active participation of students in workshops on nonviolence
3. Increasing awareness among youth organisations of the importance and complexity of mediation, developing their leadership as agents of peace.
4. Seeing a rising demand for training from youth organisations

Read more about Oiseaux de la Paix's work on Read the Spirit here.