Our History

Popular Education and Action Centre (PEACE) is a training organization/capacity building organization that deploys educational interventions as basic tools towards the fulfilment of its missions. Participants in PEACE’s educational programs (training) are largely filed-based social action groups/ community-based organisations focused on a variety of issues like land, forest and water rights across the county. These groups/FBOs come from the 10 states of the Hindi speaking belt of the country.

PEACE has emphasised fostering a culture of questioning among these groups, helping them develop critical tools to analyse and address the root causes of marginalisation. The training programs are designed not only to build capacity but to cultivate collective reflection and action, aligning with the needs and aspirations of local communities.

PEACE was initiated by a group of educators during early 1994 following the economic ‘reforms’ and ‘structural adjustment’ process initiated by the government in 1991. They wanted to explore what these reforms meant to the social development sector with a specific focus on indigenous and vulnerable communities, their resources and livelihoods, democratic spaces, institutions and knowledge systems. During its inception, PEACE also recognised the erosion of traditional knowledge systems and the adverse effects of privatisation on local resources. It aimed to restore the agency of vulnerable communities through platforms that promote shared learning and participatory decision-making. PEACE wanted to keep the tradition of questioning alive by strengthening the grassroots civil society engagements and building capacities of people working directly with communities. This vision has translated into a participatory framework that bridges grassroots movements with macro-level advocacy, ensuring that localized struggles feed into larger systemic transformation. PEACE believes that given appropriate ‘spaces and opportunities’; people have the ability to understand and identify ‘processes and structures’; responsible for their marginalisation and deprivation and also have the willingness to collectively transform the same. To this end, PEACE has been working with community collectives to create platforms to help them access such spaces.

These platforms have not only provided marginalised groups with opportunities to challenge dominant structures but also fostered horizontal linkages among collectives. Such collaborations have enhanced solidarity and created opportunities for shared knowledge production and collective action. PEACE has also been facilitating horizontal linkages among such collectives and supporting collaborative efforts among them. PEACE began as a statement against appropriation and co-option of participatory philosophy into the domination paradigm of development and anticipatory or voluntary surrender of its early protagonists.