May 30th Peace Dance 2 in Suroba

On the 30th of May the last in the series of PeaceDance was carried out by PBI together with lokal partner Sanggar Seni. As with the first Peacedance PBI tried to empower Sanggar Seni, a local umbrella organisation for traditional dance, music and handicrafts, to pay attention to local culture and cultural rights. We brought together 5 differents groups out of different areas in the Baliem Valley. The goals were again bringing together different tribes and pay attention to local culture as a part of human rights. After the formal program of performances and the bakar batu one of the groups started playing music and everybody started dancing spontaniously. It was a great event were people have been brought together in a broad sence.

May 24th 2009 Filmscreening with Gladi Rohani

The filmscreening was carried out by Gladi Rohani a local religious organisation that works with children in the age of 12-19 years. PBI worked together with Gladi Rohani to prepare and carry out the event. We watched the whalerider together were issues arise like culture and gender and afterwards we opened a dicussion and we did a role play about certain comparable issues in Papua and we played some games. It was a great event were everybody involved was really excited.

May 16th 2009 Opening Peace Resource Center

On the 16th of May 2009 PBI Wamena celebrated the re-opening of the Peace Resource Center in Wamena with a big bakar batu with more than 100 visitors.

PBI Wamena established a Peace Library in 2005. To make the library more mature and self-responsible PBI decided to hire local volunteers, extend the amount of books, change the design of the library and start organizing activities. This resulted in the Peace Resource Center which is fully funded by the Dutch Missionary organisation CMC. Because of their financial support to the Peace Resource Center for three years PBI was able to hire, train and empower two local volunteers and make the library ready for the time that PBI maybe is no longer needed in Wamena. The funding also resulted in more possibilities to invest in new books, new activities and soon there will be two laptops in the library so that the library volunteers and the visitors can learn and work in the Peace Resource Center.

The event was also attended by a journalist of the local newspaper Cendrawasih Pos and the on Monday after the event a very informative article about the Peace Resource Center of PBI was placed in the newspaper to make more people aware of the existence of our library.

26 March 2009 Holiday in the Maluku's

Beautiful diving in Ambon during our holiday in the Maluku's. 

21 March 2009 Peace Dance in Assologaima with PBI partner Sanggar Seni

On the 21th of March PBI carried out the first Peace Dance with local partner Sanggar Seni an umbrella organisation in the Baliem valley for traditional culture like music, dance and handicrafts. The objectives of the Peace Dance event are diverse. We want to bring together dance and musicgroups in the Baliemvalley that used the be in tribal war together. By dancing and making music together we want to pay attention to the local Papuan culture as a part of Human Rights. The event was attended by 4 groups from different places in the Palim and there were around 100 participants in total. After the performances PBI carried out a PBI socialisation in the kampung and opened peoples thoughts about their meaning of Peace and the children made beautiful drawings.

March 1th-10th F2F 2009 PBI meeting with partners and clients in Bali

This was a great meeting with PBI volunteers, staff, committee members, clients and partners from Papua and Jakarta. To bring clients and partners to this evaluation/strategy meeting was new this year and we learned a lot from them about what they need from PBI and were PBI can improve. After 2 meetingdays with clients and partners PBI went through a lot of proposals for improvements and the teams presented their work from the last year.

February 23th and 24th Finance workshop

On February 23th and 24th PBI organized a finance workshop to build capacity amongst PBI's local network of NGO's and activists. During the activities of the committee of Peace Day 2008 PBI discovered that there is a not enough capacity on financial management like, making and dealing with budgets, balances and proposals for funding. This workshop was facilitated by Heidi Scheunemann as a financial specialist with a lot of experience in working with Papuans in this field. The 2 day workshop was attended by 15 participants.

Rabbit couple in PBI house

Preparation of fieldtrips and Peace Education activities

One of PBI's very important principles is the principle of transparency. In PBI's daily work this  is shown by the fact that all the activities of PBI are well socialized with the local authorities like the head of locale government, police and military. Before PBI carries out a fieldtrip or a peace education activity PBI makes sure that the local authorities know who PBI is what PBI's principles are and what the activities are that will be carried out. In this picture you see the head of the police force in Wamena. 

February 14th 2009 Peace discussion with PBI partner YSBA

At the end of 2008 and the first two months of 2009 PBI worked together with Peace Education Partner YSBA (Yayasan Silimo Bina Adat) to prepare a series of Peacediscussions. On the 14 of February 2009 the last Peacediscussion was carried out and facilitated by PBI partner YSBA. Among the 13 participants where local social activists like local NGO's. The goal of the Peace Discussions was to open up a discussion and to form a working group to work on the issue problems with alcohol. 

February 12th 2009 Fieldtrip to PBI Wamena client in Napua

PBI provides regular fieldtrips to areas where PBI clients work and live.  Napua is a place very close to Wamena and you can reach it with a bicycle ride uphill in about an hour. Before you can enter the village you need to get permission to pass from the military post. 

Spring 2009 Beautiful markets in Wamena

Wamena has more than 5 markets and on each market you see beautiful traditional mama mama's selling their fresh fruits and vegetables.