Turning Youth Away from Violence

Akol Paul Kordit came to the Institute’s 2008 Leadership Development Workshop (LDW) from Juba, Southern Sudan. Akol is the Chair of the Youth League of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the largest opposition party in Sudan. During his experience at the LDW, Akol was particularly moved by a personal story of forgiveness that was told by ISP Executive Director, Randy Butler. In that story, Randy told of reconciliation with his father, thirty years after his father had essentially abandoned him when he was 14 years old. Akol was intrigued by the healing powers of reconciliation and forgiveness.

The next year Akol returned to the USA to participate in another LDW, this time as a Peer Leader. Akol came to the workshop ready to tell his story of forgiveness. He related that upon returning to Southern Sudan after the LDW in 2008, he set out to visit with his parents and reconcile with them. Akol told of the tragic death of his younger brother before his eyes, in their home, years before. Their home had been raided by members of a militia. The encounter ended with Akol’s brother shot and bleeding to death on the floor of their home. Without explaining all the details, Akol told us that he had held his father responsible for the death of his brother and that they had been estranged ever since. But Randy’s story had convinced him that good could come out of confronting his father. He found his father and forgave him, restoring a relationship that had been severed years before.

Akol’s experience at the workshop also positively affects his work in Sudan’s cattle camps where he persuades armed youth who were killing each other to stop the killing, reconcile, and work to understand each other.

We asked Akol, who serves in a leadership position within the SPLM, why he returned to serve as a peer leader at the ’09 LDW. His answer was that he has such much more to learn about peacebuilding. Akol today continues to use his peacebuilding skills as he works to lead his people out of a culture of violence into a culture of peace.