On the occasion of International Peace Day 2018, we are pleased to announce our new project: Building Bridges - Youth Work for Peace and Dialogue. The aim of the two-year global project is to promote peace education and dialogue through youth work in developing countries and in Europe by initiating a cross continental approach. This will build on the work that IFM-SEI undertook in 2015 in Europe and the Middle East on peace education, culminating in the publication of the Peace Education Handbook. This project will focus on Asia, Africa and Latin America, and it a much needed project exploring one of our key values of peace through non-formal education.
Why peace and dialogue?
Across the globe we are seeing increasing rising divisions in societies and tensions between different social groups. There is an increased strain on young people due to political and socioeconomic pressures and groups of young people are blaming other groups for problems being created by the political elite. A rise of populism and nationalism is seeing groups being pitted against each other. Youth can be the power to change this with over 1.8 billion young people in the world - its largest youth population ever.
Building Bridges addresses the need for a two-pronged approach of education and dialogue to tackle social exclusion and overcome the societal conflicts through youth work. We live in a globalised world and therefore need global solutions to local problems - hence this project will bring together partners from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The project will start in October 2018 and will be completed by the end of 2020.
What will we be doing?
This heart of this project is two training courses for youth workers - in peace education and in inclusion and dialogue respectively - and the publication of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the theme. Youth workers will plan their own regional training programmes to disseminate the project outcomes and outputs after this project.
The project will also provide capacity building in project and financial management the leadership of partner organisations and representatives from local authorities or local governments of the partner countries in order for them to support the youth workers’ localised projects. The Building Bridges toolkit will be published at the end of the project in July, accompanying the MOOC, and a closing conference in Brussels will take place for NGOs and EU institutions.
Coordinating organisations
- IFM-SEI, Belgium
- ELIX, Greece
Project partners
- Girls Excel, Cameroon
- Youth Advocates Ghana, Ghana
- KKSP Foundation, Indonesia
- Juventud País Solidario, Paraguay
- Asociacion Educativa Nuevo Amauta, Peru
- AKBAYAN Youth, Philippines
Want to know more?
Keep an eye out on our website and social media channels for more info! The project is generously funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission.
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