What is perceived as a conflict today can take many more different forms than 20 years ago. It is very hard to keep conflict parties apart from each other and prevent their communication today, in times of modern technologies and digital communication. Negative feelings that are often boosted by traditional media, for example in the countries that have frozen conflicts, can be even further built up and spread through social media where people engage in serious online conflicts and all kinds of hate speech towards each other. Unfortunately, we can also see that the groups that promote extremism and radicalisation are powerful in attracting attention of young people, grooming them and recruiting them for their causes. Even in the cases when young people are not directly involved in a conflict, they are always among the first ones to be affected by its negative consequences -psychological damage, destruction of social life and opportunities for self-development. The EU considers conflict resolution as an important objective of its policies. There are number of policy instruments to promote conflict transformation through constructive engagement which covers a range of sectors affecting conditions and incentives at the different levels. EU has also recognised the importance of engaging the civil society in situations of conflict, but we see young people as crucial part of the civil sector that need to be more engaged in this field. This project aims to address this problem and to find youth friendly solutions for online activism for transforming conflicts, using tools that available online. This consortiums wants to create new approaches in youth work in the field of conflict transformation by providing training and support for youth organizations working in this area. Creation of open and flexible learning materials that will be based online as an open educational resource, providing space for learning and virtual cooperation are just some of the aspects of this project. Consortium believes that youth work and youth participation combined with lessons learned through non-formal and informal learning can bring new aspects to conflict transformation with young people in an online world. Bringing intercultural/interreligious dialogue to virtual world, can benefit for many causes including work done with refugees and migrants coming to Europe. This approach may open a new chapter in conflict transformation and young people’s role in it, since the internet and social media don’t recognise borders and only language could create a possible limitation for young people to communicate online. This is why we want to provide this tool on as many languages as possible including Arabic and help youth workers from around Europe get involved.
New Age Conflict Transformation (NACT) project aimed to build capacity of youth workers, youth organizations and young people to work on conflict transformation in the online world. In order to reach our aim we have set objectives and milestones in a way that allowed us to build capacities of our target group to transform conflicts in the online world, but also to create a methodological base for this work, transform it into web presentation of online learning tools “Online Conflict Transformation” (OCT) toolkit and widespread importance of the topic of online conflict transformation among defined stakeholders and online activists. In order to achieve all of these, following activities have been implemented:NACT started with Explorer meeting, where we set the directions for mutual work of consortium members detailly explained in the project activities and methodology section and gathered inputs for preparation of conceptual framework of the online curricula for conflict transformation through the implemented focus groups by the experts. At the end, this was developed into major output of the whole project – OCT toolkit. After finishing preparations and setting the baseline, Training for trainers was held, building the capacities of participants to help young people to transform conflicts in the online world. Youth workers and online activists who participated gained necessary knowledge and skills to use NFE and online activism for transforming online conflict with young people and jointly with experts they have developed a methodological base for this work. They were empowered to involve online aspect into work of their organizations on conflict situation and disseminate this knowledge to all other stakeholders and young people. At this point all procedures and needed steps for including trainers in the Pool of trainers are defined and tested. All participants of the ToT who successfully passed self-assessment test prepared by the expert became part of the Pool of trainers, meaning being able to work on online conflict transformation. After this, representatives of member organizations from the network gathered during training for CB of the network to finalize methods prepared for online conflict transformation and to learn about communication strategy for preparing and implementing the proper dissemination for developed outcomes, methods for online conflict transformation and Pool of trainers. Detailed communication strategy for dissemination was prepared at this point and all members of Consortium had clear tasks defined for the following phase. Developed methodology was placed online creating a OCT toolkit – a collection of knowledge, methodologies and pool of experts for online conflict transformation, available to all other interested into topic to join and contribute. Also, a CTN pool of trainers was established officially launched with all criteria for future joining by the experts.In order to raise awareness on importance of the topic of online conflict transformation and involving online aspect into this work, thoroughly prepared dissemination period started after implementation of mobility activities. Dissemination involved promotion of the OCT toolkit, CTN pool of trainers and importance of the topic toward two most important groups: 1.Stakeholders important for exploitation of results of this project -institutions, organizations and individuals working on conflict transformation in general which we addressed through online campaign and direct campaigning pointing to them the benefits of using methods we developed for online conflict transformation and 2.Online activists which we called to get involved in online conflict transformation. Creation and integration of two main outcomes, OCT toolkit and pool of trainers into CT Network, while at the same time addressing all important stakeholders with a message to get involved, managed to improve environment for dealing with this topic in the following years.