One of today`s problems stems from lack of understanding between people with diverse cultural background, who often lack the possibility to truly get to know each other’s opinions and values. We believe that the way to address this problem is to give young people an opportunity to interact more in a peaceful manner, for many young people in post-war countries they have either never met anyone of the "other side" or have grown up in a negative environment due to previous generations experiences.
We aim to provide them with a safe space for dialogue, creativity and inspiration, which should lead to a better understanding of peace, reconciliation and cooperation. In a world where everyone’s opinion is public and disputes and interactions can happen in a digital environment where no physical meeting can ever take place it’s important to continue to ensure community leaders and youth leaders are advocating for tolerance and peace within their communities, including digital communities.
It is our pleasure to inform you that within YMCA Europe Roots for Reconciliation project we will hold a study session under the motto "P.E.A.C.E. – Peace, eActivism & Campaigning Education". The event will take place at the European Youth Centre Budapest, from the 16th to 22st of September 2018. It will involve 35 young people from all over Europe.
This project was elaborated by a group of graduates of the Roots for Reconciliation Peace Work Institute, namely by: Ani – Armenia, Adi – Kosovo, Anzhelika – Artsakh, Fiona – Kosovo, Irina – Georgia, Helena – Slovakia, Maksym – Ukraine, Maria – Portugal, Petr – Russia and Andreea – UK.
There are many ways to be a peacebuilder, and we find that many of our YMCAs and participants come from broken communities or from countries where there is a frozen or political conflict. We believe that starting at a grassroots level with young people in most cases born after the conflict will benefit future generations this does not necessarily mean tackling big issues right away. The culture of peace can be translated into numerous forms of action and within this study session we would like to cover the following topics:
- e-Activism for change
- Online Campaigning & Fundraising;
- Communication and Social Media;
- Positive messages and unbiased opinion
This would also offer us an opportunity to introduce Digital tools and methods to greatly improve the messages we are putting out to the world. Quite often much of the informal peace work is undertaken by NGOs within countries, NGO’s often struggle with capacity and funds and communication can be left to good volunteers and will. However, we know that social media platforms reach more people than our projects at times and have the potential to go viral and offer a digital space for comments and dialogue. The study session will focus on improving the visual and verbal communication skills of youth workers & leaders. The competencies they will develop during this session will help them to better engage with different audiences and hold the attention in order to promote peace and understanding as wide as possible.
We anticipate and will highly appreciate if our member movements share this opportunity amongst potential participants, who can apply at: http://rfr.ymcaeurope.com/peace-2018/.