PEACE-TAYO and Town Hall Meeting with University for Peace's Students

PEACE-TAYO with international students of UPeace's Asia
Leaders Program (ALP) in Ateneo de Manila University
May 20, 2011

If PEACE-TAYO is going to make a dent in the current and future human interrelations, it has to connect with the young people. And one way to connect with young people is to be and talk with them.

This was the first activity of PEACE-TAYO. It was a town hall meeting-type gathering with the international students of Asia Leaders Program (ALP) of the United Nations-mandated University for Peace, Ateneo de Manila University and Nippon Foundation.

Asian students comprising the batch 4 and 5 of ALP came to listen to an alumnus, a member of  batch 1, of the program. They were invited to reflect and join the journey made by a graduate student of peace and conflict studies three years ago. And they were briefed on the alumnus' current research on ethno-religious conflicts in the Philippines as part of his studies in Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
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The Story of Pathwalks

Have you noticed those adjoining and criss-crossing pathwalks in front of Gokongwei School of Management in Ateneo?

When I was like you three years ago, just starting my years in Ateneo, those pathwalks were not yet there. There was one straight and wide concrete pathwalk that led you to and out of SOM from the main walk of the campus. But countless students threaded those slightly marked and soiled pathways going in and out of SOM building, diverting from the familiar and established straight pathwalk.

Now, there are two or three small concrete pathwalks that are adjoining to make people meet along the way wherever they intend to go. To me, those new pathwalks are beautiful. They are beautiful in many ways. One, the small pathwalks are able to converge people along their way. These opportunities to meet and greet people along the way of our journey as students are profoundly brilliant signposts of true and excellent academic setting. Two, the small pathwalks are able to embrace and include different directions and choices of people's destinations. I simply do not like being imposed and dictated by that wide, established and straight pathwalk. Three, the new pathwalks were unplanned improvements. They were put in place because people who marked their way decided to have their own way, and not the established one. There are those who simply could not accept their surrounding as it is; they recreate and reconstruct their environment.

Each one of us is able to mark our way. Do you thread the well and often- traveled path? Or you are willing to make your own path? Do you want to meet other people who like you are in journey or you want to travel by yourself? Is your path part of a bigger and well-meaning journey?

Let's talk.
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The second part of the talk is about my current research on ethno-religious conflict in the Philippines. It is about the latent conflict between differentiated groups based on ethnicity and religion.

Briefly, some people are excluded from their society, not because of what they do, but because of who they are. They are, to an extent, excluded because of their identity. They are categorized as outgroup, and quite a number of negative traits are attached to that group. Those who exclude are the ones that believe they are better than the outgroup. They are the ingroup. The formation of ingroup and outgroup is hinged on the strong identification of each group to their social groupings which, in this study, are based on ethnicity and religion. Because people identify strongly with their own ethnicity and religion, they tend to exclude the outgroup. And this exclusion is expressed in intergroup contact avoidance.
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PEACE-TAYO would like to bridge this social distance between differentiated groups. Through activities such as workshops, trainings, conferences, lectures, talks, and games, intergroup relations can be improved to bring about peace.