Over the past years the Eurasian landscape has witnessed unprecedented levels of international migration. The UN statistics estimated that in 2015 the number of international migrants worldwide reached 244 million, including almost 20 million refugees. The humanitarian crises in the Middle East and Africa result in more people seeking to improve their lives outside of their homelands. The background information gathered from partnering institutions showcases that the number of migrants/refugees is on the increase, and lack of effective communication and social inclusion due to cultural conflicts and prejudices is a growing issue in common throughout Turkey and Europe. Based on this reality, this project aims to foster a more peaceful generation in Europe and in Turkey that approaches migrants with positive attitudes to tackle prejudices, discrimination and racism, and to promote social inclusion through intercultural communication, interaction and empathy. This is also the reason why it needs to be carried out transnationally. The projects aims to achieve this objective via an international peace dialogue campus network of university students, led by 24 “Peace Envoys” that will be trained for 2 years in the Peacemakers project to develop their problem solving, critical thinking, collaborative working and conflict resolution skills through rigorous academic preparation, experiential education and leadership development. Both formal (online course) and non-formal (train-the-trainer camps) education methods will be used. The 24 Peace Envoys will be composed of 6 students from each partner university (except Aberta). They will gather in 3 train-the-trainer camps in Istanbul, Florence, Rotterdam respectively. In these camps, the Peace Envoys will be trained as trainers, who will be assigned, right after C1, with the task of training student groups and creating peace dialogue students’ clubs in their home universities, which will finally become a “Peace Dialogue Campus Network”. This project will be complementary to previously EU funded projects that aimed to foster peacebuilding and conflict resolution activities by targeting university students in some key European countries where racial, ethnic, cultural and migration-related conflicts have begun to take a worrying prominence. It will also complement the existing peacebuilding, conflict resolution and intergroup dialogue academic and extracurricular activities on campuses by giving it a wider conceptual and goal-oriented framework. It innovates by pulling together 6 universities from 5 different Erasmus program countries to do peacemaking activities on a common platform and then back on their own campuses to contribute to peacebuilding. Through promoting intercultural learning, cultural interaction and social inclusion, this project will contribute to the concept of European Citizenship, which is among the priorities of the EU policies. It will contribute to the learning mobility of individuals, because 1) 24 students will travel to Erasmus program countries for training and academic and intercultural exchanges, as well as 7 academic and administrative staff members, and 2) Erasmus exchange students will have the chance to take our online course (O3), when they go to the partner universities in this project that will offer it as part of their curricula. The project will utilize non-formal education / blended education tools while training the participants as trainers. A “Manuel for Train the Trainer Camp” and “Peace Envoy Handbook” (O3), and eventually a “Peace Dialogue Campus Network Best Practice Guide” (O4) will be prepared. Another innovative output of the project is the creation of an online course that will be offered to all students in partner universities. Students will take this course in a given semester and earn ECTS or a certificate of participation once they complete it successfully. The curriculum of this course will be designed based on a need analysis (O1), and the final report of C1. All of the partner universities will share what they do on social inclusion in the project network and therefore that information will be accessible for all parties, which is another part of the innovative nature of the project.
Over the past years, the Eurasian landscape has witnessed unprecedented levels of international migration. The UN statistics estimate that the number of international migrants globally reached 272 million in 2019, an increase of 51 million since 2010. Currently, international migrants comprise 3.5% of the global population, compared to 2.8% in the year 2000, according to new estimates released by the United Nations (https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/international-migrant-stock-2019.html). The main objective of this project is to foster a more peaceful generation in Europe and in Turkey that approaches migrants with positive attitudes. The project aims to enhance social, civic and intellectual competencies recognized as effective tools to prevent and tackle discrimination, radicalism and racism, and to promote social inclusion through intercultural communication, interaction and empathy. The project aims to achieve this objective via an international peace dialogue campus network of university students, led by 29 “Peace Envoys” trained through rigorous academic preparation, experiential education and leadership development. The Peace Envoys are composed of students coming from different disciplines at the partner universities. Three boot camps were organized in Rotterdam, Istanbul, and Bologna, designed in topics crucial to peacebuilding e.g. intergroup contact, stereotypes and prejudices, social inclusion, inequality and social justice, European citizenship, project cycle management and so on. The Peace Envoys have been assigned with the task of creating peace dialogue students’ clubs in their home universities, which will finally become a “Peace Dialogue Campus Network”, recruit and pass on their knowledge to other students to become peacemakers, and implement their own inclusion projects on their campuses and/or in their cities. Their projects in Istanbul, Gaziantep, Bologna, Berlin and Rotterdam have all been successful, with most of them reaching out beyond the borders of the university campuses. The Project has produced 4 Intellectual Outputs; Need Analysis, Strategy Paper, Online Course Curriculum and Train-the-trainer Camp Tool Kit for Peace Envoys, and Peace Dialogue Campus Network Best Practice Guide (Best Practice Guide for University Students on How to Design Your Own Social Inclusion Project). All the outputs are open-access resources available to students, scholars and the general public via the project website. The Need Analysis and Strategy Paper were prepared based on an extensive literature review and analysis of the historical and current situation of migration to the countries of the project partners and policies developed over the years by authorities. They aim to identify the prejudice and discrimination level between migrants and natives in cities of the partner universities, by conducting surveys for three different target audiences; native students, migrant students and migrants who are at university age, but do not have access to university. The surveys were conducted in 7 languages; Turkish, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese and Arabic, via online tools (Qualtrics) and face-to-face interviews. The online course “How to stop discrimination and enhance cultural dialogue” was designed and developed as a self-learning open class course to pursue the goals and promote the fundamentals of the PEACEMAKERS project. Assessment is provided across the topics for self-learners and a set of assessments for those who want to get ECTS was created. The methodology, a proposed topic timeline is available, topic tasks are presented, the resources included, and a syllabus focused on the main subjects of the project’s three boot camps. The outputs of the Project are all included in the course which will make them available to a broader interested public. This “Best Practice Guide for University Students on How to Design Your Own Social Inclusion Project” is prepared for university students planning to start a social inclusion project. A step-by-step approach guides the way to a successful social inclusion student project that will raise awareness in their circles and attract others to get onboard. The PEACEMAKERS Project is taken as a case study. The details of the Peace Envoys’ projects and best practices are gathered in this guide. Peace Envoys from all partner universities, as well as other universities in the world, will be able to use this guide as a resource to develop new projects in the future. The impact of the project was threefold: First, it educated the Peace Envoys who can share their knowledge with their fellow students and friends; second, the general public was informed about people with a migrant background, their situation and personal histories through enhanced intercultural dialogue, intergroup contact and communication, which reduce stereotyping, prejudices and discrimination; third, stakeholders have learned about and from the project results.