Global Peace Women (GPW), a division of Global Peace Foundation Nepal, organized a workshop on Family as Peacebuilders: Strengthening Families for Peace on 23rd December, at Gattaghar, Bhaktapur.

The workshop was focused on improving communication and bridging gaps between the couples that mostly leads to minor to major fights. 11 married couples actively participated in the different games and sessions that focused on having tolerance on each other's differences, learning effective communication, focusing on a problem and exploring different solutions to minimize their marital problems for a healthy family.

GPW has been running the Peace begins in the Home Campaign for a year now as it recognizes peace as a dynamic and positive process of building healthy and harmonious relationships motivated by love and believes that peace begins in the home and to the world.

Through the Peace Begins in the Home campaign, GPW Nepal has made an attempt to initiate this new chapter of strengthening the relationship between husband and wife through cooperation and understanding.

Bambie Panta, Chapter Representative of GPW Nepal and Couple Counselor, introduced GPW’s vision, mission and its programs. Panta focused on acknowledging language of love which is the outcome of their upbringing and background. She encouraged the couples to put why question forth than just pointing fingers at each other. "Many couples get mad at each other for their misbehavior without even considering why they are opting to behave in certain way", Panta said. "Having conflict sometimes is quite normal and healthy to some extent but one should really seek help if it has turned into a routine", she said. Emphasizing the complementary relationship of men and women, Panta expressed, “Women and men are biologically different but are complementary in nature. Each plays an important role in raising a healthy family.”

The workshop facilitator, Susmit Sunuwar, GPF Nepal’s Program Officer, encouraged the couples to cooperate with each other and emphasized the importance of strong and healthy family for a peaceful society. The couples were asked to let go of their grudges and taught several practical techniques for conflict resolution and have a healthy way of communication. "Couples highly lack the ability to communicate fantasies, difficulties and joys," Sunuwar said. The workshop provides a theoretical basis of understanding a couple relationships, interplay of individual and presents them with a practical framework for its application.

"I and my wife are glad to be part of this program as it helped us to learn how to strengthen our bond and the measures to minimize the problems for better relationship. I never thought prioritizing or even considering our partners' small needs can make such difference in one's life,” Nabin Shrestha, one of the participants said.
Similarly, one of the couples,Yogesh Shrestha and Sarala Shrestha said, "We are grateful towards GPW for introducing the ways to talk about the misunderstanding with our spouse and finding its solutions. We believe that this kind of program will be an important contribution for our self development and development of our community." “We hope same program will be organized in other places and help couples struggling to express their feelings,” said another couple, Gautam Maan Malla and Rameshwori Shrestha.

The workshop helps the couples to reach a mid ground and highly discourages the play of blame-game. It aims to help in stimulating couples to talk and build up a language so that they can work through their problems and reinforce the way towards their growth. The workshop will be running free in different part of the country to reduce the increasing number of broken families and relationships that eventually hurts growth, well being and mental health of kids and all the family members as a whole.