What is the Building Bridges Project?
It’s an exciting global project for 2018–2020 which will promote peace education and dialogue through youth work in developing countries and in Europe with 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 which created the publication of the Peace Education Handbook.
Our flagship project is co-funded by the European Commission and it is focusing on Asia, Africa and Latin America, and exploring one of our key values of peace through non-formal education.
What are the objectives?
- • Train, support and inspire youth workers to empower them on peace education and dialogue
- • Give participants the tools to develop their core competences
- • Develop, test, publish and disseminate tools on peace education and dialogue
- • Increase the youth sector’s understanding of peace, conflict and dialogue on a global level through research, best practice case studies and policy proposals on the topic of peace and dialogue
- • Increase youth organisations’ and local authorities’ expertise in quality non-formal education, the human rights approach, and project management.
Who are the project partners?
There are seven partner organisations from four of our regions sending delegates to the activities. From Africa we have Youth Advocates Ghana and Girls Excel (Cameroon). From Latin America we have Juventud País Solidario (Paraguay) and Los Cachorros (Peru). From Asia we have Center for Youth Advocacy and Networking (Philippines) and Yayasan Kelompok Kerja Sosial Perkotaan-KKSP Foundation (Indonesia). And finally, from Europe we have ELIX (Greece) as a coordinating organisation.
All other organisations are invited to join and contribute to the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), Peace education toolkit for youth workers and Building Bridges closing conference which will be taking place in August 2020.
What are we doing?
The heart of this project is two training courses for youth workers - in peace education and in inclusion and dialogue - and the publication of a MOOC on the theme. Youth workers will plan their own local and regional projects to disseminate the project outcomes and outputs during this project.
The project is also providing capacity building in project and financial management for the leadership of partner organisations and representatives from local authorities of the partner countries in order for them to support the youth workers’ localised projects.
What are the activities and meetings in the project?
Kick-off meeting
Online Kick-off meeting of our project was organised on 27-28 October with the participation of responsible persons from all the project partners. In this two-day webinar all partner organisations came together to plan and shape the project.
Building Bridges Toolkit development workshop
Experts in peace education from all partner organisations came together to create Building Bridges toolkit on peace, dialogue and inclusion. Building Bridges toolkit was developed collectively with the partners starting from an analysis of the situation report and by using the expertise of our participants. The workshop focused on regional perspectives on peace and dialogue. Our partner KKSP hosted the workshop in Medan, Indonesia on 3-10 February 2019.
Capacity building for local and regional projects
One member of the leadership of the partner organisation and one person from a local authority or decision-maker in the community came together for five days to learn about how to plan and implement localised and regional projects and received training on Project Cycle Management, funding and fundraising, crisis management and intercultural learning. The training was hosted by our partner ELIX in Athens, Greece on 11-16 June 2019.
Youth worker training on peace education
In this this training, youth workers from the partner organisations learnt about peace education and how to put it into practice in localised contexts. The training was a combination of theory, practice and planning, in the Latin American context where peace processes was analysed. The training was hosted by our partner Juventud País Solidario in Asunción, Paraguay on 18-25 August 2019.
Youth worker training on inclusion and dialogue
Girls Excel will host the second youth worker training in Cameroon on 20-27 January 2020. This training will focus on how to foster dialogue between conflicting communities and exploring how youth work can stregthen inclusive societies and combat radicalisation. Participants will also discover more on how to organise regional projects on inclusion and dialogue.
Building Bridges closing conference
In this conference, we will share the results of our project's key learning points, case studies and outputs with EU partners, institutions and other local stakeholders. All our member organisations are invited to join our closing conference.
What kind of outputs will we have in the end?
Situation and good practices report
This report will explore the perspectives of youth workers working in peace and human rights agenda in four continents Africa, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Also, it will review existing literature on youth work, peace education and human rights education.
Building Bridges Toolkit
The toolkit will focus on how youth work can promote peace through education, inclusive societies and challenge conflict, with a regional perspective. We will develop it collectively with all partners, the results of the situation report and feedback from youth workers.
MOOC
We will use online open innovative ICT tools to multiply and share good practice with wider sector from the Building Bridges project. This unique learning experience will promote quality non-formal education and human rights education online.
At the end of the project, all of our outputs will be available on our website for free to support peace education work of youth workers!
