In February 2017, EVS volunteers Aleksandra Stojanovic, Daniela Eletti and Andrei Trubceac took part in a 7-day training of trainers (February 26 – March 5) “#youth4peace Training Euro-Med Peace Trainers” in The Hague, The Netherlands. The training was organised by the United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY) with the support of the Anna Lindh Foundation.
The training aimed at improving the participants’ facilitation skills on topics such as peace education, peacebuilding and conflict transformation. After an on-line training on those topics and on non-formal education methodologies and facilitation, the participants were able to discuss and deepen their knowledge on site, and most importantly they had the opportunity to plan, design and implement their own sessions during the last days of the training. This experience greatly empowered the volunteers, making them feel more confident about their facilitation skills and building connections with other young peacebuilders across the EuroMed region.
After the training, the participants are going through an implementation face which requires them to organise follow-up activities in their own communities and work as multipliers. So far, the Barcelona Group (Aleksandra, Daniela and Andrei) representing two UNOY member organisations (Fundació Catalunya Voluntaria and Nexes) have organised the following activities
- April 22nd – Conflict sensitive poetry recital (Labirynth Park). The participants had the opportunity to bring poems or songs from their cultures, and critically discuss aspects of cultural violence, violent narratives and ways to recognize and disentangle oppression, populism, national identity and the role of civic responsibility and active citizenship in their lives.
- May 7th – Workshop on counter and alternative narratives to violence (Can Masdeu). The participants had the opportunity to improve and scale up actions against hate speech using counter and alternative narratives as a tool to mainstream nonviolent/positive narratives as part of the public discourse. Also, they learned to better analyse the role of narratives both in contributing to the spread of hate speech and in strengthening human rights initiatives. Finally they were introduced to several examples of good practice about the use of counter and alternative narratives from the European context.
- May 21st – Peace games (Poble Nou beach). The participants were engaged in trust and communication exercises in order to experience and reflect on conflict and peaceful ways of problem solving and empathy building
- June 11th – Workshop on basic concepts of inclusion and diversity. The participants will explore challenges and approaches related to inclusion and will experience different ways of understanding and relating to otherness through a interactive “clash of cultures”.
- June 27th – Workshop Peacebuilding 101 druing a summer camp in Serbia. The aim of the workshop is Introduce the participants to peacebuilding and the culture of peace, to explore different forms of violence and how we can combat them with nonviolent actions and to raise awareness of all of the possibilities to counteract violent actions
In the 5 activities, 60 young people from 19 different nationalities participated, 58% girls and 42% boys, who evaluated the activities very positively.
For more information about the project and about the workshops they can send an email to projectes.pau@catalunyavoluntaria.cat