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The Hum Kadam Education for Peace Program

Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) is an initiative of the Foundationfor Universal Responsibility. It provides space for research, training, networking and advocacy onissues at the interface of gender, security and peacebuilding and works across South Asia.

WISCOMP works with educational institutions to engender a culture of peace through thedevelopment of curricula and innovative methodology. It collaborates with colleges to organizeworkshops that provide space for dialogue on different approaches that could enable teachers andstudents to address the complexities of living and working in contemporary globalized context,

especially addressing the challenges that multicultual contexts pose.

The Hum Kadam Education for Peace Program is a collaborative initiative of WISCOMP andFAEA (Foundation for Academic Excellence and Access) which seeks to constructively channelizethe potential and zeal of the youth to build trust across the divisions of conflict and to foster activecoexistence. Comprising a series of dialogues, capacity building workshops, and action researchprojects, this Education for Peace initiative seeks to create a non-judgmental space whereparticipants can dialogue on issues that have, in the past, led to mistrust among young people inKashmir, as well as with those from other parts of India. This is envisaged through institutionalpartnerships between colleges and schools in Kashmir and Delhi. Initiated in September 2012, theinteractions and workshops organized under this program seek to do the following:

Facilitate experiential learning from self and others;

Introduce theoretical knowledge from the evolving discipline of peace and conflict studies;

Promote values such as human dignity, human rights, compassion, empathy, partnership andcommunity;

Teach nonviolent communication skills;

Motivate individuals to make lifelong commitment to peace; and

Empower young people to value democracy, pluralism and active coexistence.

In March 2014, WISCOMP brought together 35 alumni from Kashmir and Delhi for a three-daybrainstorming-cum-consensus building dialogue with the goal to collectively chart a course for

cross-region youth collaborations that could influence constructive social and political change effortsin the two regions.

This workshop was organized in response to the interest expressed by alumni to contribute theirtime and expertise to building a long-term initiative for social change in Kashmir and Delhi. Therewas a desire to move from discussions to concrete outcomes and action-plans. Since January 2013,when the first Kashmir-Delhi College Students' Workshop was organized, participants made greatstrides in building a foundation for respectful communication, mutual understanding, and

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empathy. By listening to practitioner talks, sharing personal narratives, and dramatizing their ownrespective realities, they critically engaged with their societies as they are. Then, through skillbuilding, reflection, and discussion, they began to consider and envision what their societies shouldbe. As a group, they generated powerful ideas for how theythe country's youthcan work toclose the gap between what isand what should be.

Towards this end, beginning September 2013, they organized meetings, both in Kashmir and Delhi,to draft an action plan for peace and coexistence. From these meetings, emerged a proposal toinstitute a Student Alliance (spanning Kashmir and Delhi). Taking forward this process, theworkshop in March 2014 in New Delhi helped participants to determine how they can individuallycontribute to, and collaborate towards, the long-term goal of constructive social change.Thisincluded ajoint envisioning exercise to develop an action plan for peace, security, and justice acrossthe fault-lines of conflict (with special reference to trust-building between youth from Kashmir andDelhi). Possibilities to foreground and institutionalize the learnings from the Hum Kadamworkshopsat the centers and universities that the participants represent were also explored.

At the conclusion of the workshop, participants identified four themes around which they planned

their action plan for social change. They formed small groups with each group taking the lead onone initiative. The four themes were:

Education as a tool for the empowerment of women in Kashmir.

Multi-stakeholder dialogues with a purpose to build trust between different sectors of societyin Kashmir and Delhi.

A united forum of youth across Kashmir that foregrounds nonviolence in its work for localand social issues in the Valley.

Heritage education as a tool for conflict resolution.

The Multi-Stakeholder Engagement Group

The Multi-Stakeholder Engagement Group was born at this workshop. It consists of eight youthleaders from Kashmir and Delhi-NCR who have come together to embark on a collective journey tofoster dialogue and trust between the people of the two regions. The MSEG aims at creating spacefor meaningful, unconditionedand sustained dialogue. To realize these objectives the Group isin the process of developing three initiatives:

The Hum Kadam Dialogues:The Hum KadamDialogues - with which we hope to begin - isenvisaged as a twice a year dialogue meeting between undergraduate and postgraduatestudents from Kashmir and Delhi. The Hum Kadam Dialoguesaim at creating an atmosphereof meaningful dialogue by addressing topics that create hostilities directly. A direct approachis important for the MSEG because it unveils the actual feelings of the other. The MSEGbelieves that a confrontation of hostilities is a necessary prerequisite to an honest process ofreconciliation. Each Hum Kadam Dialogue Meeting shall be centered around a theme.Students shall make paper-presentations in teams of three, each presentation followed byintensive discussions. The aim of Hum Kadam Dialoguesis not to force agreements - dialogueis the end in itself.

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The online forum: The broad objective of the online forum is to create space on theinternet for large scale dialogue between the various parties to the conflict of Jammu andKashmir. The details of the website are still being worked out. As of now the website shallhave three aspects. The first shall be a combination of news/current affairs and activitiestypical of social media (such as sharing, commenting etc). The second aspect is to have an

online Student Journal. The third idea is to archive the material presented at the Hum KadamDialogues in particular and the other initiatives under the Hum Kadam: Education for PeaceProgramin general.

The Exchange Program:The broad objective of the Student Exchange program is to usethe space of education in general and technical and artistic skills in particular for thepurposes of dialogue. Towards that end we plan to start initially with an exchange programthat seeks to create a video. The video as the end product would be aimed to be short,ranging between two to three minutes, and could also be based on some of the social andpolitical issues raised through writings for the website.