Youth Initiatives for Peace – Youth Inclusion and Participation in Conflicts

Aims & objectives

The training course “Youth Initiatives for Peace - Youth Inclusion and Participation in Conflicts” provided 28 youth workers with competences on youth participation in order to strengthen the role of young people in peace building activities in conflict regions.
Therefore, a basic introduction into peace studies set the starting point to analyse the role of young people in conflicts. Based on this introduction, the participants dealt intensively with youth participation and approaches to youth inclusion to set up youth initiatives addressing community conflict and initiating a change in the conflict context.

A variety of non-formal educational tools such as simulation exercises, group work, debates, theatre methods were accompanied with feedback and evaluation sessions, cultural evenings organized by the participants, and excursions in order to reach the set objectives.

Objectives:
• To foster a dialogue on youth participation in conflict regions
• To share and exchange approaches to peace education and youth participation
• To promote the concept of European Citizenship among youth workers as a tool for peace education
• To develop projects addressing community conflicts

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

Participants:
28 participants from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands and Poland

Team: one Georgian and one German trainer, one Dutch project manager, one Georgian support staff

Training methods used & main activities

All of the methods employed during the course were participatory and required an active involvement of the participants. The applied methods were workshops, simulation excercises, debates, theatre sketches and Forum Theatre, group buidling exercises, name games, cultural presentations organized by the participants, open space for developing own follow-up activities, daily reflections, final evaluation, and sightseeng activities.

Outcomes of the activity

The general outcome of the project was that the participants received advanced knowledge about cooperation with Neighboring Partner Countries from EECA region within the framework of the Youth in Action Programme. Moreover, the participants improved their knowledge in using approaches to peace building initiatives in international and local youth work. As concrete outcomes the project participants brainstormed 10 project ideas from which four were more elaborated.

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

The tasks included: concept development for session outlines, development of session outlines, conduction of session, evaluation of sessions, daily evaluations, overall evaluation of the training, reporting

I worked on this training for 7 days days as a full time trainer.