Youth peace ambassadors

Aims & objectives

Aim of the project
The Youth Peace Ambassadors project promotes and supports the role of young people in peace-building activities that contribute to living together in dignity and dialogue through a network of specifically trained young people who strengthen the presence and promote the values of the Council of Europe in conflict-affected areas and communities.

Objectives of the project
The main objectives of this project are:

 To promote the presence and the role of young people as positive actors of change in peace-building processes;
 To strengthen the role of young people in identifying and speaking up against human rights violations, including discrimination, hate speech and those human rights violations affecting especially young people and children;
 To support the field presence and activities of the Council of Europe by fostering cooperation with key stakeholders, partners, non-governmental organisations working in the field of peace-building in order to promote the values of the Council of Europe;
 To develop the impact and the expertise of the Council of Europe’s youth sector in conflict affected areas through non-formal education activities with young people;
 To develop the competences 50 of youth peace ambassadors in human rights promotion and protection, conflict transformation, peace-building and intercultural dialogue, as well as other specific competences according to the participants’ needs, related to their role as future ambassadors;
 To support and give visibility to at least 50 local youth-led projects for peace-building in conflict-affected areas and communities;
 To enhance the youth ambassadors capacity to take action at a local level in environments affected by previous or ongoing conflicts;
 To advance youth policy’s role in peace-building and conflict transformation;
 To create and support a European network of youth peace ambassadors to secure the sustainability and medium-term impact of the project.

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

The group of participants consists of 25 people 18-25 from all countries of Council of Europe.

Training methods used & main activities

The project is based on methodology and methods related to intercultural and non-formal education approaches.

The trainer undertakes to develop and implement, together with his co-workers, the training programme of the two residential Seminars of the Youth Peace Ambassadors Project, and to develop and implement the “mentoring” and “e-learning” features of the course.
“A Mosque in Sleepyville” from Compaion was run.

Step 1. read the situation to the participants. They are members of Sleepyville and all are troubled with the idea of construction of a new mosque on a piece of derelict land belonging to the city council.

Step 2. Divide participants into groups.

Step 3 Explain the rules of the debate to be used during the meeting and make sure everyone understands they will play an active role in the debate at a certain point.

Step 4 The time for preparation in groups is of 30 minutes and assigned spaces for group work are publicly announced. The Council meeting will only last 30 minutes, so arguments have to be relatively condensed and sharpened.

Point participants to additional material relevant to their debate available for consultation within the room.

Step 5 Gather participants back for the meeting. The mayors role should play her/his role now and allow time for all arguments to be exposed.
Step 6 At the end of the meeting, a vote can be called upon.
Step 7 debrief and evaluation. Debrief coulld focus on:
- emotions
- results of vote
- results of lobbying
- interation with other groups and change of position
- capacity to identify with one’s role
- link with reality of participants
- right to freedom of thought, conscience or religion
- rights at stake
- peace in a community and relation with human rights

Outcomes of the activity

The first training laid down the basic of the whole project and helped participants to know more about HR. We reflected in a team during evalution meeting, analysed participants evaluation forms. In general it reached it's aims and objectives and addressed the competences we wanted to address.
In a period between seminar 1 and seminar 2 we prepared and run e-learning units which were evaluated in the end.

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

I was a team member, seniour trainer. I am responsible for preparing and running parts of the program, developing e-learning units, mentoring.

I worked on this training for two years long-term project days as a full time trainer.