Reducing male violence : a peace education project among juvenile offenders.
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Date
2009
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Abstract
Violent behavior is one of the most critical problem facing the world in general and South Africa in particular. The level of violence in our society is of wide concern. Many people are caught in a cycle of violence as victims and/or perpetrators. In the face of such increasing violence, it is crucial for peace educators to focus and teach people nonviolent ways of solving disputes to help contribute to a better awareness of the root causes of conflict from the global to interpersonal level and encourage individual to develop nonviolent behavior. In relation to the issue of reducing violence, I understood that action research provided a suitable methodology for researching the issue of my facilitation of nonviolence and problem solving workshop. It offered that in a way that allowed qualitative data to lead to action in the complexity of the situation. As Seville statement posits, violence is not innate but people are nurtured in violence and gradually become violent. However, one of the goals of peace studies is to nurture a commitment to nonviolent social change. To accomplish this, it was imperative to design a peace education program and apply it in a series of workshop with juvenile offenders. I embraced this education with the objective to build the capacity for nonviolent responses to conflict among a group of juvenile offenders at NICRO-Durban. Training for nonviolence and problem solving promises to develop attitudes and behavior that help people to live in harmony with each other and with self as individual. Through an experiential approach, I sought to train them in the use of creative nonviolent ways of handling situation in which people often resort to violence. Despite the limitation of this self-report method is that it was difficult to prove whether people are answering truthfully and had a realistic awareness of their own behavior. But the evaluation provides evidence that this study was substantially successful in achieving the aims and objectives set out for the research. The immediate out-come of the program was satisfying and the results show that this program is impacting on individual lives.
Description
Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2009.
Keywords
Violence in adolescence--Prevention--South Africa., Juvenile delinquents--Rehabilitation--South Africa., Peace--Study and teaching., Theses--Conflict resolution and peace studies.