Sri Lankan youth should be trained, mentored, motivated, and guided in all forms of alternative dispute resolution to solve disputes within communities in order to build a harmonious nation where everyone can coexist peacefully regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity. The SEDR project is a unique intervention that empowers youth to become stakeholders that can understand, analyse, and explore various alternative options to resolve community conflicts.

The overall objective of the SEDR project is to strengthen dialogue between the people and the state, contributing to the resolution and upstream prevention of local disputes.
With the successful intervention of phase one of the SEDR programme, the second phase of the intervention of the programme was launched on Friday 18th November 2022 as a 5-day residential training programme with 25 youth (18-35) participants from communities within the Eastern Province.

One of the approaches that contributes towards the objective of the SEDR program is the use of the Active Citizens module to train selected youth. The Active Citizens initiative is a social leadership program from the British Council that promotes intercultural dialogue and social responsibility as key leadership competencies, focusing on Social Action for Supporting Effective Dispute Resolution.

The trained youth will be in the field for one week to identify potential disputes in the areas they live. The second part of this training session commences on 30th November for four days, where five identified potential disputes will be analysed and discussed in depth, and participants will propose Social Action Projects (SAP) that will tackle the resolution of these community disputes in alternative methods.

The SEDR program is implemented by Muslim Aid Sri Lanka in the Eastern Province in partnership with the British Council and with the funding support of the European Union. Five divisional secretariat areas are being targeted for phase two of this project, namely: Uhana, Sammanthurai, and Addalaichenai in the Ampara district and Kuchchaveli and Mutur in the Trincomalee District.