At its core, the project aimed to empower young people and youth workers to actively contribute to sustainable peace by strengthening their capacities as peacebuilders at individual, community, and environmental levels. More specifically, the project pursued 4 interconneted objectives. First, it sought to enhance youth civic engagement and democratic participation by equipping young people with the competencies to act as active peacemakers and responsible citizens, enabling them to design and implement local peacebuilding initiatives. Secondly, it aimed to foster creative and structured problem solving skills through the Design Thinking methodology, combining innovation with practical project management tools to develop feasible, locally rooted solutions. Thirdly, the project focused on strengthening participants understanding of peace, Sustainable Development Goals, human rights, inclusion, and their interconnections, promoting a holistic and critical approach to peacebuilding across social, environmental, and democratic dimensions. Finally, the project developed trainers competencies to design, run and evaluate nonformal education training sessions that integrated Design Thinking in peacebuilding contexts.
The decision to apply for the INNOV8PEACE project was driven first by the broader European context and second by the issues observed by the partner organisations on their daily work with youth. Speaking of the broader aspect, the project aimed to tackle the effects of increasing geopolitical conflicts, social divisions, and the spread of radical discourse on youth. Which at the local level, comes to be displayed with increased levels of stress, anxiety, and disengagement, while at the same time limiting opportunities, education and infrastructure for meaningful participation in democratic processes. In this context partners believed that their expertise and knowledge could contribute to tackle the growing need for innovative, youthled responses to social divisions, conflicts, and democratic disengagement. That being said, this project embraced a comprehensive perspective towards peacebuilding by engaging youth as peacebuilders on all three levels of sustainable peace (individual,community, and environmental). Providing them and the youth workers with skills, knowledge and the right context to see and act as active contributors to the process of addressing these issues at the personal, comunity and environmental level.