Montreal Gazette
MONTREAL, CANADA, November 17, 2003: Schoolyard violence can be a problem anywhere. But at one St. Henri elementary school, staff and students decided to do something different about it. Seven years ago, Ludger-Duvernay school began developing a program to train Grade 5 and Grade 6 students as mediators to intervene in small disputes. The program went into effect four years ago. The student peacekeepers, patrolling the schoolyard in teams of four or five, have been so successful they won an award yesterday for their work. Principal Lise Cantin, special educator Soledad Dextre and five students were delighted as they accepted the 2003 Peace Medallions awarded by the Montreal YMCA. The annual world-wide awards were created in 1987 to recognize efforts to realize the peace vision enunciated in 1981 by the World Council of YMCAs. Ludger-Duvernay is one of several Montreal-area schools with violence-limiting programs called Vers le pacifique (Toward the Peaceful), Cantin said. “I am certain that these young people will develop skills that will enable them to be peacemakers later on in life,” Cantin noted after the ceremony at the YMCA residence on Tupper St. Carolanne Masse, 12, said monitors like herself are getting increased respect from their peers, and often student will come to them for help. The winner in the individual category was Dilip Chowdhury, a Hindu Bangladeshi who came to Canada in 1994 and was accepted as a refugee claimant. The award citation said he had won the respect of the Bangladeshi community for “giving freely and quietly of his time and skills” to mediate in family crises. Chowdhury now works for the Tyndale-St. Georges Community Centre in Little Burgundy district, where he was first involved as a volunteer.