In conjunction with UN Day of Peace today, September 21st, the #defyhatenow initiative against online incitement to violence in South Sudan is holding a social media #PeaceJam17. Join us and take part in One Billion acts of Peace today.

Events are taking place all day both online and live in numerous locations in South Sudan, as well as globally including Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Canada, and Japan.

#PEACEJAMBOR:

We hold a Marathon for 10 teams (5 for kids and 5 for adults), then peace messages, dramas, songs, poems and more. Communities on/offline share ways of bringing peace home together. #Bor #Peacejam17 #SouthSudan

#Peacejam17 #Bor #SouthSudan

Anyone interested in either South Sudan or in mitigating online hate and incitement to violence is invited to participate and connect with South Sudanese working to promote peaceful social media narratives through positive online cultural engagement.

#Peacejam17 #Torit #SouthSudan

The #PeaceJam in Torit will gather youths from communities in Eastern Equatoria to spread the culture of peace through drama and traditional performances (dance/ music). The workshop shall engage participants with an introduction to understand the impact of online hate speech and incitement to violence, followed by a focused discussion and idea sharing practical ways that community and youth leaders can engage in countering hate speech and mitigating incitement to violence in their communities, both online and offline. The outdoor event brings this message to the rest of the community with performances from local drama groups, artists, and peace activists.

Simply sharing your own social media peace messages using the tags #defyhatenow #SouthSudan & #peacejam17 will help strengthen the use of online channels for positive cultural change!

A #peacejam can be a social gathering, it may be based on existing types of gatherings, dances, theatre, music, sports, or improvised forms of collaborative action. To “jam” for peace is to improvise peacebuilding without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements, but to develop new ideas and ways of doing things spontaneously with the energy coming from the creative interaction of participants. Join the #defyhatenow #SouthSudan #Peacejam17 on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, WhatsApp or other channel to be a social media peace mobilizer.

#Peacejam17 #Juba #SouthSudan #Defyhatenow

#PEACEJAMJUBA Nimera Talata Basketball Court

Music, drama and sports are a way of getting young and old together to laugh, cheer and listen to messages of peace. Performances from peace artists like Hardlie Avenue, VIP, WJ, and speeches from peace activists. The day ends with a basketball match of mixed boys and girls teams.

#Peacejam17 #Juba #SouthSudan #Defyhatenow

#PEACEJAMNAIROBI: Arts reflecting on Cultural diversity in South Sudan

#PeaceJam17  features discussion with South Sudanese artists and poets to an audience of South Sudanese diaspora community in Nairobi. This informal event aims at bridging gaps between different communities by sharing different cultural experiences from South Sudan. Guest of honour is renowned Abyei-born South Sudanese author and poet, Akol Miyen Kuol, also known as Akoldit. Akol will share his poem collection entitled ‘The Last Train’, referring to the August 2015 peace agreement. He calls on both men to ensure that South Sudanese citizens do not miss that last train.

#PEACEJAMEDMONTON  South Sudan Development Foundation, Canada

South Sudan Development Foundation is organizing a discussion on how to achieve peace in South Sudan. Come share your innovative peace ideas and listen to other participants’ ideas. The event is co-presented by #DefyHateNow as part of the series of #PeaceJam17 event around the world on September 21 – International Day of Peace! South Sudanese community members who attend the #PeaceJam17 in #Edmonton on September 21, 2017 will have the opportunity to share their innovative ideas about how to achieve peace in South Sudan. The goal will be to have the participants address the South Sudanese issues from a positive, solution-focused, peacebuilding lens, as a diaspora community.

#PeaceJam17 #Edmonton participants will have the opportunity to post their peace ideas and messages that they have generated during the discussion onto social media – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Instagram etc. Participants will be encourage to create a habit of consistently posting peace messages on social media – because peace is something we should be preaching everyday not just at #PeaceJam events or International Day of Peace, which comes once a year.

#LetsTalk #thinkB4Uclick #BloodFree2017 #AnaTaban
#DefyHateNow #PeaceJam #SouthSudan #Peace4SouthSudan #WorldPeaceDay

#defyhatenow: Mobilising Civic Action Against Hate Speech and Directed Social Media Incitement to Violence in South Sudan.

#defyhatenow is an urgent community peacebuilding, training and conflict reconciliation project aiming to support grassroots efforts to avoid media-induced violence in South Sudan, through the vehicle of social media. We seek to enable those affected by the conflict to bring down the tone of online rhetoric, help the reconciliation process between their communities and develop a vocabulary with which to support ongoing peace and stability.

#defyhatenow responds to South Sudan’s ongoing civil crisis by addressing the roles played by social media users in exacerbating or helping to mitigate these issues, since the eruption of conflict in December 2013 and July 2016.

Our vision is to strengthen the voices and support the actions of youth, women’s and civil society organizations, peace activists and independent journalists in South Sudan to develop strategies to mitigate such scenarios, as part of a wider global ‘dangerous speech’ mitigation community. Also to create an awareness of the impact hate speech has in potentially fuelling conflict and how social media can be used in a constructive and peacebuilding manner.

#defyhatenow is funded by the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (zivik) with means of the German Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt)