National Peace Programme actions cover the whole country, cutting across religious, social and ethnic communities to spread a message of peace. Since its inception in 1999, we rely on Caritas Sri Lanka's 13 diocesan centres to reach out to communities to implement our programmes at grassroots level.

Co-existence and tolerance are key values we attempt to convey through diverse activities such as exposure and immersion projects, non-violent conflict resolution and human rights.

These are carried out in schools, universities, temples, churches, mosques, kovils (hindu temples) and community centres under the form of seminars and workshops targeting all children, students and adults.

The Unit is coordinated at national level and notably organises the Caritas Youth Convention once a year. Also, by way of student exchanges with foreign schools, we aim at sharing peace-building experiences with other children in the world.

Planning & Evaluation
NPP unit is in the process of evaluating the effectiveness of its programmes at grassroots, diocesan and national levels. The process began with a meeting of the Diocesan Directors, Peace Coordinators and Animators on the 21 st of September 2006. This meeting was followed up with the Peace Programme Bi Annual Meeting that was held on 03rd – 05 th October 2006 at the Retreat Center , Tewatte, Ragama.

A “Think Tank” was formed with the participants of Mindanao Peace Training Programme. They have been visiting the dioceses and conducting meeting with the different segments of the community in order to identify the successes, challenges and failures of the National Peace Programme (NPP). Based on the findings of this evaluation process, the NPP unit will be formulating a strategic plan for next 3 years.

Federal System – Series of workshops
Following the emphasis of the Bi Annual Meeting 2005, the NPP unit initiated to conduct a series of workshops in introducing the Basis of the Federal System. The first workshop was conducted on 24 th October 2006 at Seth Mini Center in the Ratnapura Diocese. 30 participants including the animators and the leaders of the small groups attended the work shop and sessions were facilitated by Mr. Dhinush Jayasuriya, the Assist; Manager, NPP unit.