Community Development Center (CDC), a national NGO in Yei River County, has distributed 170 speaker box radio sets to community listener groups in Kupera Payam of Lainya County and Mugwo Payam of Yei River County.
The handheld speaker SD cards contain readymade community content messages of conflict resolution, peace messaging and natural resources management.
Sebit Martin John, the CDC’s Executive Director, told Radio Tamazuj on Monday that poor natural resource management has been identified as the main trigger of conflict in Kupera and Mugwo Payams.
He said the distributed speaker boxes aim to unite local communities to share ideas and address natural issues through peaceful dialogue.
“Our goal is aimed at achieving peace messages through peaceful management of natural resources, and we want to see that management of conflict is reduced through the use of speaker boxes for communities to share ideas without triggering conflict because we have seen that the use of the speaker boxes encourages dialogue on peace and management of natural resources at the community levels,” he explained.
Grace Apai, a beneficiary of the program in Mugwo Payam, said the radio speaker box is helpful to women and men in the community.
She said they use the speaker boxes to listen and champion messages of peace and controlling natural resources in the Payam.
“The speaker box SD radio sets contain messages of good natural resources management, and we learned that if we have some trees that need to be harvested, we need to sit down and agree on the distribution of the forest proceeds without conflict among ourselves and secondly we are also learning and sensitizing communities not cut down trees because we benefit from the rain and clean oxygen and this is what we are educating ourselves on in the villages,” she said.
Emmanuel Guya, another beneficiary of the program in Kupera Payam, said the speaker boxes help communities understand creative means of peacebuilding, land and natural resource management.
He said his group of 20 members sits under trees to listen and disseminate messages of reconciliation, peaceful co-existence, and transparent use of community natural resources.
“Here we have a lot of issues on land conflict and natural resource management problems, and this speaker box is helping us to record community conflict resolution mechanisms, and we listen to our resolutions by ourselves, and in my group, we record messages and move with the speaker boxes from one community group to another group so that people can also listen and people here are very happy with this peacebuilding and natural resource management program tool,” Emmanuel said.
The peace and humanitarian development project is funded by the Austrian Development Agency through Caritas Switzerland. The consortium project in South Sudan is being implemented by Community Development Center (CDC), OFAO and AFARD in Uganda.