The “PeaceBag for EuroMed Youth” network exists from 2008 to disseminate/socialize concepts and skills in the areas of Peace, Culture of Peace, Conflict, Conflict Transformation, Nonviolent Communication, Human Rights, Intercultural Learning and Non-formal education. The network currently consists of 15 organizations from 13 countries, all committed to the mission and vision of the network and with the 4 strategic objectives of the network, Capacity Building, Awareness Raising, Support Structures and Network Development
In the process of realisation of the of PeaceBag network idea many people had benefited a lot. Mustafa who is from Egypt was one of the members of this team from the beginning. After working in the process of PeaceBag being a network Mustafa did also his EVS in FCV in 2014 and after long time he came to visit FCV people last week. He had many things to share with new volunteers working now as member of FCV family.
The project of creating PeaceBag was divided into three phases.
Phase 1 consisted of training on peace and intercultural dialogue and also included the first writing workshop where the main contents of the toolkit were established.
Phase 2 was a four month local and international implementation process of some of the contents of the Peace Bag toolkit. This phase continued for another four months after the evaluation phase was completed.
Phase 3 was the network meeting and evaluation of the project between the coordinators which also included the evaluation of the toolkit.
The output of three phases was the publication – the Peace Bag for EuroMed Youth toolkit.
The role of FCV is to hold the responsibility of being International Secretariat of the PeaceBag network. The secretariat’s main responsibility is to assist collaboration with entities and experts from different fields and countries and to coordinate the work of the network and working groups. There are 4 working groups are working on the same topics with strategic objectives of the network.
In the framework of the network and during 2016, the FCV has promoted the development of EVS long-term projects as a strategy for human resources of the network, promoting EVS projects with the title “Volunteering for Peace” among the network members.
PeaceBag network secretariat is still running by EVS volunteers. It gives a big opportunity to volunteers to hold this responsibility and courage them to take the initiative to make impact in international and local levels.
Asmin