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From Committee Room to Classroom

From a three-day orientation in 2024 to a school follow-up in 2026: how Dire Dawa's community peace committees were built, strengthened, and extended into the classroom.

Supported by SIDA Eastern Development Initiative (EDI) Dire Dawa, Ethiopia PAR Project
Nov 18–20, 2024Founding orientation
Jun 18–19, 2026Strengthening their role
Jun 25–29, 2026Taking it into schools

Peace committees are one of the program's longest-running threads: a body of community members trained and periodically re-trained on their role in keeping the peace. The record below spans a 2024 founding orientation, a 2026 capacity-strengthening round with an exact program title, and a follow-up that carried the same practice into a Dire Dawa secondary school. In between, the committee was restructured (from 30 members down to 11) and renamed the "Peace Family," a change made for tighter coordination and follow-up; that restructuring doesn't appear in any of the three chapters below.

I.Nov 18–20, 2024 · Karamara Hotel, Dire Dawa

Founding the Peace Committee

A three-day orientation trained newly formed peace committee members on their role, framed as an effort to "promote peace and unite communities."

The room brought together a mixed group of younger and older participants, working through the committee's mandate at round tables. The body being formed here was a 30-member peace committee (23 men and 7 women) tasked with mediating local disputes, supporting youth during religious festivals, fostering interfaith dialogue, and distributing brochures carrying peace messages. Members would go on to receive certificates and ID cards recognizing their role, and the committee later explored transitioning into a registered Civil Society Organization to broaden its reach.

Event banner naming the peace committee orientation training, November 2024
Roundtable discussion with a mixed group of younger and older participants
A participant speaking beside handwritten Amharic flip-chart notes
Wide view of the orientation room, bright with natural light through curtained windows
II.Jun 18–19, 2026 · East Star Hotel, Dire Dawa

Strengthening Their Role

Roughly nineteen months later, under the same PAR project, committee members returned for a training formally titled "Capacity Strengthening Training for Peace Committee on Their Roles in Promoting Peace, Coordination, and Community Linkages."

SIDA, the Life & Peace Institute, and EDI are the named partners behind this session, the same partnership behind the program's other 2026 trainings.

Group photo holding the full event banner: Capacity Strengthening Training for Peace Committee, June 18-19 2026, East Star Hotel Dire Dawa
A committee member speaking during the training
Participants stretching during an energizer break, arms raised
Second view of the event banner and EDI mission rollup banner beside it
III.Jun 25–29, 2026 · Dire Dawa Comprehensive Secondary School

Taking It Into Schools

Days later, the same practice extended into a real classroom: students in uniform, an EDI facilitator teaching at the chalkboard, and what appears to be an election or registration process underway at the desks.

The school visit carries no independent confirmation of its own, but the facilitator's EDI-branded shirt and the continuity with the June training make the connection clear.

Classroom scene with students in uniform and an EDI facilitator teaching at the chalkboard
Election or registration materials being organized at student desks
An EDI office meeting room, likely internal coordination ahead of the school visit

A note on this draft

Chapter II's exact title and this story's dates are treated as confirmed. Chapter I's membership figures (30 members, 23 men/7 women) and mandate description are matched to this chapter because the "Establish/Strengthen peace committee" activity and this founding orientation are clearly the same committee, in the same year, at the program's usual Karamara Hotel venue. Chapter III (the school) has no independent confirmation of its own: its connection to the program is inferred from the facilitator's branded shirt and the timing, not otherwise confirmed. Two similarly-named 2025 folders ("Meeting with Peace committie," "Peace Committie meeting") were checked as possible sources for a stronger Chapter III ending; both turned out to document an unrelated English-language classroom and an unbranded community gathering, neither confirmable as peace-committee content. Chapter III's ending remains as unconfirmed as before.

A real gap in the sequence: the committee was restructured from 30 to 11 members and renamed the "Peace Family," including a period of friction with the Dire Dawa Justice & Security Office, which initially objected that government already ran its own peace committees, before EDI's group was recognized as complementary "Peace Ambassadors." That restructuring, negotiation, and renaming isn't documented anywhere in this story's material; it sits, undocumented, in the year between Chapter I (2024) and Chapters II–III (2026).

Missing: committee members' names, first-person testimony, and any outcome data (cases handled, elections held). Add before external distribution.

EDI · Draft photo story · Not for external distribution