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Street drama program for the presidential election in 2005
This initiative had a very successful outcome in reducing election violence and encouraging voters to behave in a peaceful and respectful manner towards one another. Staging drama performances in the areas that had previously been dangerous, at election time, enabled them to educate the communities of the need for responsible actions, from both the political parties and the voters themselves.
Description
Jeewa Shakthi organised a street drama group performance to promote peaceful voting before the presidential election in 2005. This increased community feeling afterwards in several districts, since often the heightened election tension in a presidential election creates divisions in the community according to different political party affiliations that often result in violent conflicts. The Minipura Street Drama Group from Ambilipitiya were invited as we had already had very satisfactory experiences in working with them earlier in several successful conflict transformation initiatives.The target group of this initiative was the community living in these districts.
Aims / Objectives
The objective of this initiative was to encourage people to vote peacefully without being involved in violent behaviour. It aimed to create the awareness among people that when we attack the opposing political party’s presidential candidates’ supporters, those people whom we fight with are our own neighbours, and the people who gets hurt are not the presidential candidates, or the politicians, but the people from our own communities. After elections the initiative focused on to encourage the winner’s supporters to include the lost candidates supporters and work together to create a better community.
How it is Articulated
The street drama group created brief performances to suit the requirements of the initiative and before staging it, the performance is announced all over the village, asking everyone to gather to the place where it takes place. After the performance a discussion is initiated on its content to engage with people. A resource person was present in the crowd to facilitate the discussion. Villagers were noted to have said things like‘..Oh it never occurred to me that it’s only us who fight and destroy each other’s property, while the politicians are friendly with all their opponents..’ and ‘..when I was in hospital having suffered injuries from a fight, it was my neighbours wife, who supports the opposing party, who sent food to my family. I didn’t receive anything from the politician I support. I never thought about these things before.’ This process took place in all five districts before and after the election.
Achievements / Learning Points
The performative format of the initiative was attractive to the communities in the selected areas and it enabled us to easily approach them and convey the message to them. At Lunugamvehera village over 1000 people came to watch the drama and after the elections they wrote to us saying that not even a single election violence happened in their village due to the impact of the drama, whereas it was a common incident during previous elections. Therefore this has been a very effective peace initiative. Further the realisation that election violence committed in villages only results in the loss of their own community members and that it has no productive impact upon any group at all was awakening for the people.
Through the process of conducting the initiative, we realised that addressing the people who live in villages is very important in issues like this, since they are the ones who feel these issues and suffer from these problems than the higher strata of the society, who often do not really feel the physical and psychological results of war.In selecting the locations to perform, it is important to select places where election violence was prominent during previous elections. Also doing a survey of each village to get an understanding of the violence that has taken place there and designing to performance accordingly helps to make the drama easy for the audience to relate to, thus increasing the effectiveness of the initiative.
Geographical Area of Operation
Galle, Matara, Hambanthota, Rathnapura and Monaragala districts.
Funding Resources
USAID-OTI
Organisations Involved
Minipura street drama group