In the Maluku province of eastern Indonesia and the Poso regency in Central Sulawesi province, local communities are still severely divided, having their lives in a geographically segregated manner in the aftermath of historical religious conflicts between Muslims and Christians. Despite peace agreements now in place, distrust remains and there are ongoing fears of a potential flareup of communal violence and violent extremism. SPF has been working for the promotion of the WPS Agenda and deradicalization in both provinces and building local networks. In this project, we collaborate with our partner Leimena Institute to modify their developed training module called Cross Cultural Religious Leaning (CCRL), targeted at teachers of secondary education to teach religions of communities other than their own, to address social divisions and distrust particular to post conflict areas. By this initiative it is hoped that their students will be offered the opportunity to learn about other religions, and overcome their prejudice against communities outside their own faith group.

Jin Fujimoto