Peace Club members that we work with across Central Uganda and West Nile are shaping student leadership and school disciplinary practices. First, we highlight how Peace Club members are shaping student leadership.
At Kansanga Seed Secondary School in Makindye Division of Kampala, the Peace Club Patrons deliberately encourage the Peace Club Members to contest for leadership so they can institute programs and activities that foster the culture of peace throughout the wider school community. Today 80% of the prefectorial body and Students Council leadership at Kansanga Seed School are members of the Peace Club. The impact on school discipline and peace is already visible.
At Kololo Secondary School in Kampala Central Division, the high number of students and class streams had made it challenging for the Peace Club members to share their message of peace with the wider school community. They sought and got permission from the school administration to allow them have a male and female student Peace Ambassador in every class stream.
That this way, when the peace club has peace education initiatives targeting the wider school community, it would be easier to mainstream them throughout the school. The Peace Ambassadors are also groomed and equipped to deal with minor conflicts in their classrooms. This approach is now being piloted by the Old Kampala Secondary School Peace Club.
The second result has been the transformation of school student disciplinary practices from demeaning and harsh penalties to more peaceful approaches. Peace Club partner schools now invest in deeper investigation of student disciplinary cases focussed on establishing root causes of issues rather than rushing to punish. They practice more active listening and have adopted more peaceful corrective measures such as counselling. Peace Club Patrons also continue to create awareness against traditional forms of student correction such as beating among their teacher colleagues.
Additionally, schools have for long handed out rules and regulations to prospective students but these have been one-sided, neglecting the regulations to be followed by teachers. On studying about how equality translates into peace in the recently published Peace Education Manual, the peace club patrons at Katwe Noor Secondary School suggested that the rules and regulations be replaced by a rights and responsibilities handbook that guides the relationship between teachers and students.
They also advocated for the school administration to establish the position of Dean of Students to be a student representative on the school management committee and this was granted by the school administration. The dean is also part of the peace club and even attends peace education training activities.
Finally, the new Peace Education Module’s hummingbird story has been adopted in Kololo Secondary School as a solution to the littering problem. The campaign stresses that just like in the story, if each of the 4000 learners in the school picked up 1 piece of litter, the school environment would be cleaner and more beautiful.
Such have been the joys of following the journeys of our Peace Club students and Patrons throughout 2023. We look forward to a more exciting year ahead!
