Participants from Cameroon, Ghana, Philippines, Indonesia, Peru and Paraguay are coming together this week in Asunción, Paraguay, for the first of two youth worker training seminars as part of the Building Bridges project. The youth workers are instrumental to the success of Building Bridges by taking the project to a grassroots level and the youth workers will be responsible for delivering local/national projects  in their home settings and regional projects along with the other partners in each respective region. All of our participants have a strong base in their local organisations and will be working with members of the leadership from their organisations and representatives from local government and/or authorities to deliver their projects (who were trained in our project and financial management capacity building training in June). The youth workers are committed to the project long-term, and will take part in a second training programme in early 2020.

The programme for this week long training is divided into two parts. The first half is focused on input on the theme of peace education and sharing experiences - through interactive, non-formal education methods - and building the youth workers' competences around the topic of peace education. The second half of the activity puts their experience into action through the planning and preparation of localised projects and getting invaluable feedback from the other participants and team members. The participants will be given plenty of time to get to know each other, as they will form an international network of youth workers and peacebuilders, a support tool that will be vital for their future work.

The youth workers will be implementing their projects in their localised settings between September and December 2019. These projects will be the platform for educating others in peace education and the youth workers will be multipliers of what they've learnt through this training in Asunción. The youth workers will reflect on the implementation of their localised projects together at the next face-to-face activity in Cameroon in January 2020, which will be followed by training on how to bring together conflicting groups of youth together in society through dialogue. Following this training, the youth workers will work in their regions - Africa, Asia and Latin America - to plan and deliver regional projects on peace education and dialogue for inclusive societies. Watch this space as other IFM-SEI organisations in these regions will be invited to join!