What is a Peace Club?
Peace Clubs in schools are voluntary groups of students who meet after school or in break times to learn about and practise peace-building in their school.
They receive training in conflict resolution skills, become peer mediators in their own schools and contribute hugely to building a culture of peace not only in their school but in their families and in the wider community.
Are Peace Clubs Effective?
Evidence is accumulating that the presence of a Peace Club in a school can have a transformational effect.
After a year of having a Peace Club in her school, one headteacher confessed, ‘They have developed communication skills which have made them able to approach me with their views, concerns and queries. All of them know me for my black rod which I would step out of my office and brandish to threaten for discipline. Now I have stopped that after they made me see that I was being violent.’
A district school inspector commented: ‘‘I have been monitoring school children's positive behaviour in the pilot schools compared to those that have not been inducted. There is a huge difference.
There is need to induct more schools, so as to inculcate positive peace and friendship value to our future generations.’
A recent study of Peace Clubs in South Africa has confirmed that student members develop skills and values which they apply to many aspects of school life, but they also deploy them outside school e.g. in family situations.
What does our Project do?
The PWZ approach is to offer a Peace Clubs manual to every school new to the project and it is our aim to offer free training in AVP to the teachers running the Peace Club. Following a recent course, one teacher commented, ’It is very educational, healing and it really changes a person for the better’.