So it is that the flame that will keep burning in the hearts of SPI participants is the hope that peace is realizable, and that they have roles to play in its realization. As peace maker Vaclav Havel puts it: "Either we have hope or we dont; its a dimension of the soul. Its an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It is the ability to work for something because its good not because it stands a chance to succeed."
The MPI, based in Davao City, has brought together 450 people from 17 countries rife with conflict and division, including Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Croatia, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Kosovo, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and the Philippines. The participants and facilitators represented local and international humanitarian organizations, local NGOs, youth groups, church-based organizations,
Peoples organizations, local and international networks, corporate foundations, academic institutions, womens groups, and socio-civic groups. Faculty and facilitators included Europeans and Americans and Filipinos with extensive knowledge of conflict resolution and peace initiatives.
The MPIs vision is "peaceful and must communities in the Asia Pacific," and its mission, to "educate and empower communities, institutions and individuals and justice and peace-builders and as catalysts for social transformation throughout Asia and the Pacific."
This years three-week institute offered courses in conflict transformation, fundamentals of peace-building, understanding local capacities for nonviolence, mediation, negotiation and dialogue, approaches to social change, designing community-based peace-building initiatives, and religion as a source of conflict and resource for peace.
The third week, which is this week, has been devoted to field work, which exposes the participants to community-based programs. A model community being visited, according to Gamiel, is a result of MPI efforts the establishment of a "zone of peace," which is a barangay whose Muslim and Christian inhabitants have learned to accept each other, work on livelihood programs together, and not allow outside forces to create conflict in the community.
A plan of the MPI program is engaging in actual dialogue with members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, but since they are in hiding as they are wanted by the Philippine government, meetings with people who have had contacts with the rebel group have been arranged instead.