The Youth Wing of the Alliance Development Trust (ADT) partnered with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to equip young peacebuilders in the country's Northern, Southern, and Eastern provinces. As a part of the project, the ADT supported three local organisations in the target provinces to implement youth dialogues and six-day residential training programmes on social cohesion, gender and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). In total, the project trained 75 youth. The ADT partnered with the Provincial Youth Empowerment Network in the North, Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in the South and LIFT NGO in the East. Following the training, the ADT also supported the youth organisations to implement six visual arts projects to promote social cohesion and SRHR in the identified regions.
In Sri Lanka, low literacy levels concerning sexual and reproductive health and rights among communities have been weaponised in the form of inflammatory narratives and organised disinformation campaigns targeting religious minorities in the country. Against this backdrop, the project aimed to build literacy on SRHR as a means of equipping youth to be resilient to such false narratives and formulate counter-responses to build social cohesion in their communities.
As an extension of the project, the ADT also developed a self-paced e-Course on social cohesion and SRHR. The course, which is offered as a part of the MinorMatters e-Learning platform, was developed in Sinhala and Tamil. Moreover, the ADT also produced a short film on the broader themes of peace, reconciliation and justice, featuring award-winning young actors in the South. The film titled 'The Tea is Cold' was screened at the Jaffna International Film Festival in March 2022.
The visual arts projects implemented by the youth organisations included art exhibitions in Jaffna and Galle, street dramas, short awareness films and traditional 'villu paatu' on the project's themes.
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