07 January, 2010
ONLINE DISCUSSIONS ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE
number of views: 343
Dear Visitors, as promised we are launching online discussions on our Facebook page. The goal of these discussions is to stimulate people from different parts of the world who are interested in peace activities to contribute their knowledge for the development of effective tools and methodologies for peace. We perceive the discussions as a learning process for all participants and we expect from these discussions to collect and compare best practices, unsuccessful practices and stories, and the most or least successful tools for peace building.
Hurry over to our Facebook page and join in the discussion. Apart from that, we would like to urge you to inform your Facebook friends and contacts to join the discussion as well.
The current topic is: National Interests and Peace Work.
During our work we have noticed that in our society (Armenia) some of our activities and efforts were perceived by a large amount of society as counter to national interests and the national benefit; for example, when we are criticize the existing course of negotiations on conflicts existing in Armenia.
This is what we will share with you and we hope to receive your perceptions on the linkage between national interests and peace work. Should they be (or are they) linked? If so, which is more important for peace activists?
We would like to set a few guidelines:
• The working language will be English for now; however, if you would like to see either Russian or Armenian sections please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate you.
• Be concrete and bring examples from your own work and life.
• Be respectful of others in the discussion; offensive posts will be deleted.
• During the discussions we will be open to your proposals for further guidelines.
We look forward to your comments and experiences at Peace Dialogue’s Facebook page.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, accompanied by his wife and representatives of the Russian government, arrived in Yerevan on August 19 on a state visit to cement the Russo-Armenian military alliance with a new defence agreement. During his visit he also took part in unofficial summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). 
Vanadzor youth has celebrated the international youth day on August 11 in the Vanadzor State Theater named after H. Abelyan with a photo exhibition and a concert. This was the first time that this holiday was celebrated so significantly in Vanadzor; more than five hundred people participated in the photo exhibition and in the concert. The preparatory activities for this project were started by Peace Dialogue NGO with the support of the NGO’s board members, NGO OWEN in Germany, and from individual contributions from German citizens. From May 2010, more than forty young people were participants in the photo contest and representative of music bands in Vanadzor were involved in the organization. 
According to my observations, when watching news in Armenia you hear more words related to “Azerbaijan” and “Turkey” than “Armenia” sometimes, practically always in a negative sense, and - most problematically - practically always having the effect of deepening the enemy image within society. The ever-present enemy image does not, however, confine itself to news programs or state-run media. 
The Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR) is recognized as a leading organisation in the fields of peacebuilding, conflict transformation, violence prevention and post-war recovery.