TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Ragıp Zık
The Youth Peace Ambassadors was a Council of Europe project carried out between 2011 and 2014 in several phases. The project promoted and supported the role of young people in peace-building activities that contribute to living together in dignity and dialogue. The project was based on human rights, intercultural dialogue, youth participation and democratic citizenship processes in Europe and was built on the idea that young people are able and should be active citizens and protagonists of social change in conflict-affected communities.
Young people active in youth-led civil society organisations and initiatives from across Europe were selected to take part in this 3-years project and become Youth Peace Ambassadors. During the project, they learnt about peace and human rights, developed local projects for peace and advocated for human rights and dignity. They thus act as ambassadors for the values of human rights, peace, and intercultural dialogue, and keep on also bringing these values to youth work and to youth initiatives in their communities. The participants were also committed multipliers involved in an organisation or network, institution and/or informal group.
The conflict situations addressed by the participants are those where communities have been experiencing or recovering from armed conflict, terrorism, frozen conflicts, racism and aggressive nationalism and hate speech. Discrimination and human rights violations experienced by Roma communities or young migrants and refugees were also covered by the project.
Team members with various backgrounds came from different countries in Europe. Participants were more than seventy youth workers and leaders mainly coming from conflict-affected regions such as Caucasus, Balkans, Eastern Europe, Turkey, Russia, and the UK, alongside other European countries.
As part of the non formal learning methodology, simulation exercises, role plays, open-space activities, case studies, group work, open debates, as well as variants of these in digital formats were used throughout the three-year course period.
The Youth Peace Ambassadors remained active and built up a solid and growing network of young people looking for a better world where a different peace is possible! Many have decided to create an independent network - the Youth Peace Ambassadors Network – which has, since then, held activities in cooperation with the Council of Europe at the European Youth Centres.
Youth Peace Ambassadors network webpage: https://ypa.network/ and social media https://www.facebook.com/YouthPeaceAmbassadorsNetwork/
As a member of the trainers' team I was in charge of developing the concept and approach of the training course, designing course modules, conducting sessions, mentoring participants, providing consultancy on participants' projects, evaluating the learning process both with participants and with team members.