cpbr (Centre for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation) was born in 2002, as the brain child of Dishani Jayaweera and Professor Jayantha Senevirathne. Over the past 20 years, cpbr – home for diversity, has continued to spread its seeds of love and empathy to every corner in trauma-torn Sri Lanka. With peacebuilding and conflict transformation as its essence, cpbr set out on an adventure, that would bring us face to face with pain, as much as it did with passion. We are three wings, three initiatives. APINAM: religions for humanity, a coalition of faith leaders and community leaders representing the religions in Sri Lanka, WOMAN, a coalition of female religious leaders, teachers, young women, young girls and women leaders, and women affected by violence who work on healing the soul, soil, mind and body, and SANGYOG an interfaith youth coalition that chooses to live in love. In 2019, we began a slow but steady transition – one that sought to draw from the roots of wisdom in our past, and gently inculcate it to our present moment the right here right now. Today, as we set off on a challenging new journey in 2022, with a group of young humanists from multi-ethnic, multi- religious backgrounds who try to become spiders, weaving a human web, we carry in our hearts and souls, the very principles that cpbr was first founded on, ‘Heal Oneself – Heal Others – Heal Nature’. The road ahead is daunting, but we remain undeterred. This is our story of peace building.
