What is this project about?
‘PeaceCommunicators‘ annual work plan aims to provide space for young people to develop skills, attitudes, values, and knowledge to build sustainable, just, and supportive societies. They will do this by becoming a multiplier of inclusion. i.e., this will give young people the skills required to provide an alternative to normative way by questioning status quo.
More specifically, the main objectives of the project are:
- Develop participants` understanding ofpeace and peace education concepts at the personal and interpersonal levels through training trainers on peace education.
- Gain awareness of the importance ofnon-violent conflict resolution through getting familiar with conflict mediation and conflict prevention concepts with a particular focus on non-violent communication and critical peace education in the context of group work.
- Enhance youth workers’ competencies and training capacity to become young mediators that create safe(r) spaces in youth settings and learn how to mediate and resolve conflicts in diverse and blended learning environments.
- Empower participants through non-formal education and peace education to act as multipliers of inclusion that mitigate violent radicalisation.
- Create materials for youth leaders, and youth trainers on mediation, conflict prevention and broadly understood peace education.
Phases of the project
Phase 1: Critical Peace Educators
This would be a seven-day training for 2 2 young people in Brussels in March . The training will be the basis of the future phases . This phase will develop the participants’ knowledge, capacities, and skills on peace education, non-violent conflict resolution, conflict mediation , and conflict prevention, focusing on critical peace education in the context of group work. It will also help the participants develop training sessions that would be implemented online and face to face on peace education for young people from their local groups. The outcome of this phase would be two trainings on peace education, one held online, and the second one face to face.
Phase 2: Mediation Academy
This phase will be held at IFM-SEI I nternational Camp (Common Ground 2022) ; this camp will have 3000– 4000 participants and will be in the UK at the end of July, for 11 days. The phase will contain two different methods of learning. The first one will be training on skills through the mediation academy days, where 30 participants from the previous phase will come together to enhance their knowledge and be more advance in peace education, mediation, peaceful communication, combating oppression, personal trauma, theatre of the oppressed, and critical thinking. The second learning method of this phase will be learning through observing and journaling in between the academy days .
Phase 3: Layers of Peace
This phase will compile all the outcomes of the previous phases to develop them into sketches for short animations videos and a “starter kit” for trainers on how to defuse conflict in groups, whether virtual or physical. We will look at the group dynamics and issues that appeared in the first phase during the activities’ follow-up. We would also look at the journals ’ outcomes from phase two (the Academy), propose more situations where conflicts might appear in groups and ways to solve them so that, as an outcome of this phase, it would be a skeleton for the starter kit the animated videos.
Outputs
- Materials for youth leaders, and youth trainers on mediation, conflict prevention and broadly understood peace education.
- “PeaceCommunicators Starter Kit” with tools and methods covering educational ways in supporting trainers to defuse conflict within peer group.
- Short animated videos on conflict management, non-violent communication and personal trauma.
This project is supported by the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe
