‘eLearning for Peace,’ a new online community, which has been established to examine how eLearning can support peace building and reconciliation, will hold a ‘virtual workshop’ at eLearning Africa this year. The workshop, which will be run from the Centre d’Education à Distance in Cotonou, Benin, is being organised by representatives of organisations including the Georgian Technical University, GIZ (Armenia), The New Security Foundation, the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Africa Peace Forum and the Association of African Distance Learning Centres.
“The aim of the workshop is to look at the connection between education and peace-building and then to examine ways in which eLearning can contribute to new initiatives,” says one of the organisers, Professor Tamar Lominadze of the Tbilisi Technical University in Georgia. “We are convinced that in a wide range of areas, from the teaching of history to language learning to helping diverse communities to develop new skills, for example in agriculture and business, eLearning has the potential to play a major role. There will be several presentations, demonstrating examples of cases where eLearning has made a difference, and we hope that, by focusing attention on best practice and successful initiatives, we will be able to develop a useful programme of advice and assistance.”
The workshop is expected to feature presentations on the use of eLearning for reconciliation in the Caucasus, eLearning initiatives to bring divided communities together in Kenya and learning projects to de-escalate small-scale rural conflicts in Africa.
The Cotonou workshop will be followed by regular online meetings, at which the group will discuss new initiatives and develop content. If you would like to become involved in ‘eLearning for Peace’, please join the online community at www.elearningforpeace.org.
