Holy Trinity Peace Village - Kuron,
making a dream become true

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Faith & Leadership

Emiritus bishop Paride Taban of Diocese of Torit has a dream which in short comes to this:
I have been dreaming of a community where people with different ethnicity and different religious background can live side by side with confidence in harmony and fellowship.

Dreams never become more than dreams unless you are prepared to invest hard work to make the dream become true. This is actually also what the bishop is expected to do. He has chosen to select several tools to make his dream become a reality having in mind that the most important sector to be present to obtain peace is to have development. "Development is peace".

The first tool is to empower the people to produce enough food.

From the colonial time the first word you hear from people: "I am hungry".
By establishing a demonstration farm the bishop is helping people to secure their food situation. From the demonstration farm and a garden and an orchard, people will learn not only to increase the harvest by their cultivation and food production efforts, but also to learn to cultivate new crops that can improve their daily menu. Through this project, improved farming methods will be introduced in order to diversify livelihood opportunities among the communities and therefore reduce the occurence of cattle rustling. The improved methods include; ox plough technology, the use of improved varieties of seeds and good crops and husbandry practices. The purpose is to support the efforts of pastoral/nomadic people in food production and also enable them gradually to be successful agro/pastoralists. It is anticipated that by adopting these farming methods, the communities will have food suplus and reliance on improved quality cattle for their livelihood. This in turn will reduce the conflict that has existed for many years among these communities, reduce frequency of famine and stop begging for food.

The second tool is to make formal education accessible and acceptable for the girls, boys and adults in the pastoral communities.

People are very eager to get education for their children and especially the Sudanese people are very much looking for the formal education which can give a paper to proof that certain school levels have been passed. By establishing schools from nursery stage to primary and later on also secondary school the bishop's vision with the Holy Trinity Peace Village will be in a position to meet one of the main concerns of the people. But giving possibilities for schools and education for the young people will not be covering the illiterate adults who during the years of war have lost the possibilities for attending school. By starting up with adult education programs, the peace village will bring an offer to those generations too. Not education for job opportunities but for life.

The people in Kuron area will be from the Toposa, the Jie, the Nyangatom, the Kachipo and other communities in the surrounding. The pilot project is expected to create a foundation for lasting peace among the sudanese communities. Kuron Demonstration Farm Project aims at introducing animal traction technology to train the community to increase the acreage of land under cultivation using animal traction in stead of the traditional hoes which has limited the people to opening small pieces of land. Traditionally, livestock is kept for prestige and marriages, which are some of the main reasons why youth are so much involved in raiding neighboring communities and youth have no other activities. Introducing animal traction technology will therefore bring about a new use to which they put their livestock hence keeping the youth occupied and reducing their free time, which is otherwise used for cattle raiding.

The third tool is to promote peaceful co-existence among the neighboring tribes.

In most cases cattle rustling is conducted during the rainy season when there is water along the routes and when the communities see no access of others. Therefore the beneficiaries will not only acquire new agricultural skills to enhance food security but also live in harmony among themselves despite their diverse ethnic backgrounds. In addition, the people working on the farm will be drawn from the other communities. This will have the effect of demonstrating that the communities can work together without suspicion. This has already started at the Peace Village through a food for work project supported by World Food Program and CRS. The pilot project is therefore expected to create a foundation for lasting peace among the communities.

This is an excerpt from a project preamble to selected donors who are supposed to support the vision of bishop Paride Taban.
If you happen to read this and want to see the whole preamble you might send an enquiry by e-mail to the one who described the whole preamble.