The peace education program in Timor-Leste began with a meeting with Ambassador of Peace H.E. Prem Rawat in Dili, Timor-Leste, in 2015. According to Prem Rawat, “Peace must be in everyone’s life. It is not the world that needs peace; it is the people. When the people are at peace within themselves, the world will be at peace.” For us, peace is truth. Truth is the measure of justice. Truth is someone and not something. Truth is the name of Peace. But according to H.E. Prem Rawat, Ambassador of Peace, peace is a feeling. The feeling is not dead. It is something alive, and it lives in everyone’s heart.

Though the focus of the ADRH Foundation is the truth. Truth in education, talking about teachers, students, parents, governmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations. It focuses on peace between teachers, students, and parents. Those are the three valuable actors in maintaining peace through truth maintenance.

The truth is about the teachers’ duty to share knowledge with love, patience, and wisdom. Students also have rights and responsibilities in patience, learning, wisdom, and action. Likewise, parents support teachers and children by accompanying children at home or outside school. Hence, students are always in an environment
where they can be independent and responsible.

The ADRH Foundation focuses on efforts to promote peace, especially in schools. For us, school is the place where children learn about peace. The school needs to develop and promote a school ethos consistent with the core values and principles of peace and to examine and over come structural and cultural factors that support violence in schools. The peace education approach must go beyond curriculum development and seek to internalize specific skills, competencies, values, and practices, inside and outside the classroom. The peace education initiatives in formal schools need to be supported by the work of all school staff and other stakeholders in a systemic way so that teachers can adequately support the inculcation of peace values in their students. Classroom teaching must combine an individual approach to peace education with a student-centered approach to tolerance, helping students to recognize their contribution to the dynamics of the conflict they may be experiencing.