“Building the Collective: Six Stories”

It is with great joy that we present our latest publication, “Building the Collective: Six Stories”, a booklet born from our Civil Peace Service (CPS) programme, dedicated to fostering reconciliation, peacebuilding, and conflict transformation in Sri Lanka.

Building a community is inherently a collective journey, an endeavor that is not without its obstacles. This booklet aims to explore the complexities and challenges that Sri Lankan society faces, through the life stories of individuals who are daily engaged in this process.

We recognise that society is a complex tapestry, woven with economic, political, social, and cultural dynamics that evolve over time. For this reason, we wanted to give voice to personal experiences that highlight the attempts at meaningful change, offering a human perspective on these processes.

“Building the Collective” does not aspire to provide a definitive analysis, but rather to present six chapters that narrate the struggles and resilience of women and men who face crucial issues for the present of Sri Lanka: the human-elephant conflict, the land rights of the Malayagam community, microfinance, natural resource grabbing, the right to mobility, and enforced disappearances.

This booklet is an invitation to reflect on our collective responsibilities, connecting individual experiences to the broader themes of national unity, reconciliation, and development. We hope that the narratives you will find in these pages can serve as a guide for collective thinking, and an inspiration to actively engage in promoting meaningful social transformations.

The booklet is available in Sinhala, Tamil, and English.

Click here to download the booklet for free