DEEP EnGender took part in the Environmental Justice Workshop titled “Environmental Justice: Rethinking Knowledge, Power, and Inequality in the Context of Climate Change and Agrarian Transitions in Southeast Asia” (24–29 January 2026), hosted by The Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD), Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University.

The workshop brought together researchers and practitioners working across academic research, public communication, and alternative forms of knowledge production in Southeast Asia. From the outset, environmental justice was framed not as a technical issue, but as a deeply political and structural process shaped by unequal power relations, extractivist development, and epistemic hierarchies. This orientation closely resonates with DEEP EnGender’s approach to environmental justice as a lived, gendered, and historically situated experience.

Across lectures, discussions, and field-based learning, environmental justice was explored as a relational practice that raises critical questions about whose knowledge is recognized, whose realities are legitimized, and whose lives are rendered expendable in the name of development. Sessions on epistemic agency, ontological conflict, and the political ecologies of land and water highlighted how injustice emerges not only through material dispossession, but also through the systematic marginalization of Indigenous and local ways of knowing and relating to the environment.

A field visit to Mae Ngud village offered a grounded encounter with environmental justice as lived experience. Listening to Karen community members reflect on the impacts of dams, water diversion projects, and agrarian transitions illustrated how development interventions reshape livelihoods as well as moral relationships with land and water. The use of People’s Environmental Impact Assessment (PEIA) demonstrated how communities actively produce their own knowledge to challenge state and corporate narratives. This approach aligns strongly with DEEP EnGender’s commitment to community-led knowledge practices.

Within this collective learning space, Herlina Dedy Listiani (Researcher, DEEP EnGender) contributed reflections from DEEP EnGender’s engagements in Indonesia and from her ongoing research on myth and extractivism. She shared how narratives often categorized as “myth” or “belief” can operate as ethical and political frameworks through which communities understand ecological change, responsibility, and care, while also asserting alternative environmental futures beyond dominant development logics.

Insights from this workshop will contribute to DEEP EnGender’s ongoing research, internal learning processes, and public-facing knowledge production. This participation strengthens our commitment to environmental justice work that is culturally grounded, gender-sensitive, and attentive to Southeast Asia’s epistemic diversity.

The Youth-Inclusive Learning Academy (YILA Academy) is a regional initiative dedicated to strengthening inclusive education, ecological literacy, and peacebuilding among youth in Southeast Asia. Conceptualized under DEEP EnGender in 2025, YILA Academy provides a co-learning space for young people aged 16–25, particularly those from marginalized and underrepresented communities, to co-generate knowledge, share lived experiences, and develop community-based responses to social, ecological, and peace-related challenges.

Building on this foundation, the YILA Academy Special Batch 2026 is implemented as part of the Rotary Peace Fellowship Social Change Initiative (SCI), with support from Rotary International and the Otto & Fran Walter Rotary Peace Center at Bahçeşehir University. Through this collaboration, YILA Academy aligns its youth-led learning model with the Positive Peace Framework and Rotary’s global peacebuilding agenda.

Why This Programme Matters

Across Southeast Asia, young people continue to face overlapping structural challenges, including limited access to quality education, restricted civic participation, economic precarity, and the uneven impacts of climate change. These conditions are further intensified in conflict and post-conflict contexts, where social trust is fragile and opportunities for intercultural dialogue remain limited.

YILA Academy responds to these realities by reframing education as a relational and peace-oriented process. Rather than treating learning as purely technical or outcome-driven, the programme emphasizes empathy, communication, ethical reflection, and dialogue as foundational capacities for sustaining peace and social cohesion. Youth are positioned not as passive beneficiaries, but as active partners in shaping knowledge, narratives, and collective action.

Programme Overview and Structure

The YILA Academy Special Batch 2026 brings together 30 youth participants aged 16–25 from Southeast Asia and officially began on 17 January 2026. The programme consists of 10 structured online sessions, designed as an integrated learning journey combining dialogue, practice, and reflection.

A significant portion of the programme is dedicated to storytelling, which receives the largest share of learning time across the ten sessions. Storytelling is treated not merely as a communication technique, but as a peacebuilding practice that supports empathy, voice, ethical awareness, and intercultural understanding. Through story listening and story sharing, participants learn to articulate lived experiences, recognize difference without hierarchy, and build trust across social and national boundaries.

The opening remarks were delivered by Prof. Nilüfer Narlı, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Director of the Center for Society, Health, Behaviour and Preventive Studies at the Otto and Fran Walter Rotary Peace Center, Bahçeşehir University (Istanbul, Türkiye).

Mentors and Learning Facilitation

The Special Batch features guest mentor sessions that strengthen participants’ practical communication and leadership capacities. Kendall Sooter, a tenured professor of Communication Studies and Environmental Science and Engineering at Cabrillo College (California, USA), leads a dedicated session on the art of storytelling, focusing on narrative clarity, ethical voice, and public meaning-making.

Simran Rawat, Global Environments Networks (GEN) Programmes Lead and Communications Liaison at Global Diversity Foundation, facilitates a session on public speaking, supporting participants to communicate confidently, responsibly, and persuasively in public and civic spaces.

Most sessions are led by Anna Christi Suwardi, PhD, FHEA, YILA Academy mentor and Rotary Peace Fellow, ensuring continuity, reflective facilitation, and a safe learning environment grounded in inclusive and dialogical pedagogy.

Learning Focus and Expected Outcomes

Across its ten sessions, YILA Academy Special Batch supports participants in developing capacities that extend beyond the programme itself. These include:

• empathic communication and nonviolent engagement
• storytelling and story listening as tools for peace and social understanding
• intercultural dialogue across diverse identities and contexts
• ecological awareness connected to lived experience and responsibility
• youth-led initiative design that translates learning into community action

The emphasis on storytelling throughout the programme enables participants to connect personal narratives with broader social and ecological realities, strengthening both individual confidence and collective awareness.

Connection to Positive Peace and the SDGs

As a Social Change Initiative within the Rotary Peace Fellowship framework, the Special Batch contributes directly to SDG 4 (Quality Education) by advancing inclusive, participatory, and values-based learning. It supports SDG 13 (Climate Action) by fostering ecological literacy and narrative-based engagement with climate realities. It also advances SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions) by strengthening youth participation, intercultural trust, and everyday peace practices.

The programme reflects the Positive Peace approach developed by the Institute for Economics and Peace, particularly in its focus on human capital development, acceptance of others’ rights, and constructive relationships across communities.

Looking Ahead

YILA Academy Special Batch 2026 represents an important step in expanding youth-led peace education that is grounded, relational, and action-oriented. Through its ten-session structure, strong emphasis on storytelling, and regional diversity of participants, the programme strengthens a growing network of young people committed to inclusive education, ecological responsibility, and positive peace in Southeast Asia.

Beyond the cohort, YILA Academy continues to build sustainability through alumni networks, shared learning resources, and community-based replication of dialogue and storytelling practices. In this way, YILA Academy is not only a programme, but an evolving platform for youth to practice peace through empathy, communication, and collective action.