A new Meserete Kristos Church peacebuilding project empowered children to put an end to violent conflict among their elders earlier this year.

The MKC Development Commission started peace trainings in December in Southern Ethiopia Regional State. Conflicts around scarce resources often turn into deadly ethnic violence, and hostile weather conditions lead to increased suffering.

Ethnic groups welcomed MKC workers to help restore broken relationships in trainings also attended by schoolteachers.

People of the Konso and Alle ethnic groups had been seeing each other as enemies due to disagreements over boundaries. Representatives from each group formed a committee in March to work on clarifying the boundary, but verbal sparring turned into violent attacks when Alle people saw Konso farmers working land claimed by both groups.

Two female teachers observed the dispute and organized a group of children from two primary schools. They taught them information from the MKC training they attended. Then they asked the children to go to the residents’ traditional meeting place and ask for peace.

The children told the elders that they wanted peace, they did not want to be orphans and they wanted their parents to raise them properly. The request shocked the elders.

“Our children are wiser than we are,” they said to each other. “We need to stop the violence for the sake of our children.”

The children were promised that the elders would do everything possible to settle disputes peacefully and not kill people to acquire land.