Peace Designer Training - Design Thinking for Youth Peacebuilders

Aims of the tool

At the end of the training participants ...

Understanding Peace
.. understand peace is more than the absence of war. They know the difference between negative and positive peace and reflect how they can contribute to creating peace on individual, community and environmental level.

Peace and Sustainable Development
.. can list the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and describe how sustainable development contributes to peace.

Design Thinking for Social Impact
.. can explain design thinking in their own words. They know the six steps for designing projects that make a social impact and understand why it’s important to focus on people, not just problems.

Tools and Techniques for Ideation
.. can use at least one creativity tool to generate ideas and apply techniques for critical evaluation.

Project Management for Peace Projects
.. can use project planning tools to create solutions, set goals, identify target groups, and plan actions for their peace projects.

Project Pitching
.. can structure and deliver a clear and compelling project pitch, preparing and presenting their peace project.

Description of the tool

The Peace Designer Training aims to empower young people aged 15-30 to use Design Thinking to create their own peace project and make a positive impact in their communities. Through this, participants experience themselves as active agents of society whose voice and contribution matters. It shows that young people - even in times of global turmoil and uncertainty, can take action and contribute meaningfully.
The Peace Designer programme includes three supporting guides:

The handbook is a structured guide for youth workers, trainers and facilitators to implement Design- Thinking - based peacebuilding activities.

Inside, you’ll find:
- A variety of proposed sessions to explore peace and sustainable development.
- Step-by-step guidance on facilitating the design thinking and project planning process.
- Ready-to-use tools, templates, activities, and materials designed to support facilitators deliver interactive, non-formal learning experiences.

The accompanying Participant Workbook is designed for them to document the results of the activities, reflect on experiences and translate ideas into actions.
The toolkit provides ice-breakers, get to know activities as well as print-out materials and templates used for the training.
The programme at the core is a fully designed programme spanning 4 modules each consisting of 2 sessions.
These modules cover concepts of
-Peace Perspectives and definitions
-Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable -Development Goals
-Design Thinking
-Creative and Critical Thinking
-Project Planning and Pitching.

Each session includes activities and variations, allowing you to adapt the content to your target group and setting.The manual includes diverse activities to choose from when facilitating content. It can be facilitated as whole programme but as well individual activities, on Peace Building, Design Thinking or Sustainable Development, can be taken as inspiration.

The publications have also been translated to Albanian (SQ), German (DE) and Romanian (RO). Downloads in German and English are accessible here. https://yspeace.eu/innov8peace/
For Albanian (SQ) and Romanian (RO) version can be accessed on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/projects/search/details/2024-3-AT01-KA210-YOU-000264832