By Yang Ater Yang
Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), with support from the UNMISS Civil Affairs Division, has trained at least 82 cattle camp youth on veterinary skills and peacebuilding.
CEPO and UNMISS also provided the community animal health workers and peace ambassadors with veterinary drug kits after imparting animal treatment skills to the trainees.
The training brought together 82 cattle camp community animal health workers (CHAW) from three states: Warrap, Unity, and Lakes.
Director General of the Ministry of Animal Resources, Fisheries, and Tourism, Gabriel Makuach Aggrey, urged community animal health workers (CHAW) to use the skills they acquired, appropriately.
He said they should offer the proper diagnosis and give drugs with the right dose to the right disease.
“If you consume the drugs by selling them all and do not maintain them by continuing to buy them, you will be removed from being community animal health workers,” he warned.
The CEPO’s coordinator in Lakes State, Daniel Laat Kon, said his organization has implemented animal health services skills and also a component of peace building, within the training.
“You know this training aims at empowering cattle camp youth through provisions of veterinary services skills, peace building, conflict mitigation, and peaceful coexistence,” he said.
Laat stated that they will also work as messengers of peace if they go back to their areas. They will be the ones conducting vaccinations for their animals.
“We brought these youths from neighboring counties of Unity, Lakes, Warrap state, that have been fighting themselves, to participate in the peace building and animal health vaccination training,” he said.
Unity State UNMISS civil affairs division officer, Elizabeth Nyoyien Gatwec Pur stated that the aim of the training was to reduce tripartite State community violence.
“We brought all the cattle camp youth and the cattle camp leaders that are at the border of Warrap, Unity, and Lakes,” she said.
Elizabeth stated that the objective of the 14 days training is to empower youth with skills that can enable them to generate some income for themselves.
“Another objective is to bring them to interact and also to build social cohesion and reconciliation as well as sustain cross community boundary peace, “she hinted.
Ms. Elizabeth commended the inclusion of women in the empowerment program.
She underscored that women are peacemakers and ambassadors of peace; they don’t want their children dying or their husbands or brothers killed, and that’s why they are here for the program.
For his part, Dut Mading, a community animal health vaccinator in Lakes State, expressed his happiness for the wonderful training.
He said the training has equipped them to be ambassadors of peace and animal health vaccinators.
“We are appealing to the government to bring us together again for the training on animal health and peacebuilding in Unity State,” he said.
“Now we have got two skills. We are animal doctors, and we are peace ambassadors, and we shall preach peacebuilding while vaccinating animals”, he added.
Meanwhile, Salvatore Mayor, a veterinary director and a facilitator at the training, urged the participants to apply the knowledge and skills acquired during the training in their respective states.
“If you are trained well, then go and do exactly what you are trained on; don’t go and do something different”, he said.
“You have trained also as peace ambassadors; go back and preach a word of peace. We are tired of communal conflicts across the border of Unity State, Warrap, and Lakes States”, he added.