Youth work - a path to peaceful societies

The training course “Youth work - a path to peaceful societies” will be held in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria from 13.05.2019 - 21.05.2019. It will involve 30 youth workers and leaders from the UK, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Romania, Turkey, Cyprus, Holland and Republic of North Macedonia.

The need of the project comes from the existing growing tension and violence among smaller ethnic/migrant groups and the increasing tensions within many EU countries in regard to nationalism and racism. After extensive analyses on the situations in all the partner countries and the long-term experience of our partners in the field, together we have developed the concept of the current project proposal. Chauvinism, racism and discrimination, combined with violence and threatening acts against minorities raises the need to seek effective strategies to address the problems of conflict, radicalisation and violence among young people. With the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, the level of violence is increasing among all countries, including the UK.

The project will cover different types of conflicts and in different settings and consequently ways of transforming conflicts by non-violent actions. The training course will foster constructive debate on recent conflicts in Europe and cooperation in the youth field. This is done by promoting non-violent approaches leading to actions on peace-building. Moreover, young leaders will discuss the significant role of youth participation in grass-root peace-building initiatives. By providing an overall understanding of conflict theories and providing space to analyses concrete conflicts and tensions, participants will increase their competences for solving conflict in a non-violent way. Therefore, youth workers participating in the training will gain skills in planning and intervening in these situations with transformation approaches, by implementing peace building activities and non-violent actions. All the above stated illustrates the importance of youth work in the areas of peace building, conflict transformation, human rights education and anti-discrimination.

Main objectives of the project:

• To develop a set of knowledge, skills and competences of youth workers in conflict transformation and peace-building;

• To equip youth workers with an understanding of non-violence concepts and human rights education that can be applied to their local communities to prevent conflicts and violent radicalisation among local youths;

• To motivate participants to advocate for non-violent actions on the local, national and international levels, and for them to act as multipliers and ambassadors of peace;

• To encourage cooperation between the organisations for further actions on youth peacebuilding initiatives;

• To promote the European values of intercultural dialogues, peace, anti-discrimination, diversity, respect of human rights, tolerance and solidarity.