Background

Maluku Province consists of various ethnic, religion and race in which each entity has own culture, habitual and traditions as well as specific local economic activities. These potential resources would be powerful to lift up peace messages while promoting local products in a gathering event at District level, called ‘peaceful festival’. The festival can bring positive energy with peaceful spirit for people joining in. It is important to note that the involvement of local community in the development process is crucial in order to raise awareness and ownership as well as commitment.

For this, the ILO has facilitated a 3-days workshop on peace festival management for LED forum members of Ambon, West Seram and Central Maluku. The objective of the workshop was to improve capacity of LED forum members in organizing a professional festival. During the workshop each forum has compiled basic information as background of the festival such problem identification, objective, theme and tagline, determine programmes, budgeting, promotion and marketing, as well as committee establishment. Due to limited finance resources, a start up support from the ILO is required to empower and motivate the committee and local community to engage the preparation and implementation the peace festival in Ambon.

Objectives

§ To empower local community at village and District level in planning and implementing peace festival in Ambon;

§ To promote local economic activities, tourist attractions, cultures and art as well other potential resources; and

§ To stimulate all stakeholders in Ambon to continue peace festival as annual event in Ambon.

Framework

A festival committee has been setup by the LED forum Ambon during the PFM (Peace Festival Management) workshop last October 2011. However, the committee members need to extend engaging under-represented community members in the village beneficiaries from different communities. Ensuring participatory process, the ILO will assign Walang Perempuan as Implementing Agency of the peace festival that will work together with the extended festival committee. The contract period will cover 5 months period from 15 May to 14 October, 2012 under BL 21.

Activity Plan

The draft Festival has been developed during the PFM workshop and has been presented to the Mayor of Ambon in last March 2012. The Mayor endorsed the festival to be implemented in October 2012. The theme of festival is ‘Pelagandong peace festival 2012’ and will be tentatively implemented in September 2012 for 3 days in ‘Gong Perdamaian’ area. The start up support from the ILO will cover capacity building process for the extended committee from 15 May to October 14, 2012 which is divided into the following activities: