After the approval of the Resolution 2250 on youth, peace and security by the UN’s Security Council, the role of youth in peacebuilding has gained recognition and direction. This resolution establishes clear lines and recommendations for the member states on five main dimensions when it comes to youth and peacebuilding measures: participation, protection, prevention, reintegration and partnerships.These directions pointed by the Security Council are far from being implemented in most of the EU and neighbouring countries. The mechanisms and structures existing are weak in some cases, or not existing in most of the others. To make the resolution applicable and effective, youth and youth organizations hold the initiative to create these mechanisms and opportunities through participation and policy development.Against this background, project “Youth as Peacebuilders – Youth Policy for Peace” aims at promoting the involvement of young people as key actors in peacebuilding processes based on the guidelines of the UN’s Security Council Resolution 2250 (SCR 2250) by creating capacities of youth-led civil society organisations in developing sustainable mechanisms ensuring youth participation at local, national and international level in Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine.More precisely, the objectives of the project are:• To develop the capacities of youth-led CSOs to effectively engage in policy development by fostering youth participation in peacebuilding at local, national and international level• To develop innovative approaches to youth work and non-formal learning for empowering young people to influence policy-makers at local and national level, specifically in peacebuilding processes• To strengthen the links and cooperation between youth-led CSOs in Europe participating in policy dialogue with public authorities and formal educational institutionsTherefore, the project is composed of the following core activities:1. Educational Programme for Young Fellows- Training Course on youth-lead campaigning and advocacy for peace- Job shadowing in CSOs working on advocacy for peace and youth participation in the EU- Planning Workshop on developing youth policy engagement projects in Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia- Youth policy engagement projects in Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia- Evaluation Seminar on the youth policy engagement projects2. Development of Open Educational Resources- a training manual on empowering young people for peace activism- an intervention guide on effective youth-led advocacy campaigns for peace3. Dissemination activities- International Youth Policy Engagement Forum- International Practitioner Training on youth advocacy campaigning for peace The project will be realised by a consortium of CSO from Armenia, Ukraine, Georgia, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands between October 2017 and September 2019.
After the approval of the Resolution 2250 on youth, peace and security by the UN’s Security Council, the role of youth in peacebuilding has gained recognition and direction. This resolution establishes clear lines and recommendations for the member states on five main dimensions when it comes to youth and peacebuilding measures: participation, protection, prevention, reintegration andpartnerships.These directions pointed by the Security Council are far from being implemented in most of the EUand neighbouring countries. The mechanisms and structures existing are weak in some cases, or not existing in most of the others. To make the resolution applicable and effective, youth and youth organizations hold the initiative to create these mechanisms and opportunities through participationand policy development.In this context, “Youth as Peacebuilders” aimed at promoting the involvement of young people as key actors in peacebuilding based on the guidelines of the UN’s Security Council resolution 2250 and at contributing for the development of mechanisms for its sustainability.More precisely, the objectives of the project were:· To develop the capacities of youth organizations to effectively engage in policy development and foster youth participation in peacebuilding at the local, national and international level;· To enhance the capacity of youth-led CSOs in empowering young people to influence policymakers at the local and national level, specifically in peacebuilding;· To strengthen the links and cooperation between youth-led CSOs in Europe participating in policy dialogue with public authorities and formal educational institutions.The project included two innovative approaches to competence development of young people and to creating applicable open educational resources for youth participation, especially on youth advocacy campaigning for peace.1. The competence development process of young fellows Youth as Peacebuilders - Youth Policy for Peace The project has made use of a combined approach of an educational programme for young peace activists – the young fellows – and a mentored application of the acquired competencies by those young fellows. Therefore, the young fellows as the primary target group of the project participated in a training programme composed of a training course and an on-job learning experience in the form of a Job-shadowing abroad. This has provided the fellows with specific competences on youth participation and advocacy for peace. In the second step of the competence development process, the very same fellows have engaged into a guided and mentored planning, implementation and evaluation process during which they have invited to create local, regional and national youth advocacy campaigns for peace responding to the specific contextual and conflict needs in their communities in Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia. During this process, the fellows were supported by their project coordinators, external experts and their peers from the involved EU partner countries who also participated in the educational programme and the respective planning and evaluation workshops that were part of the Youth Policy Engagement Project phase.One of the results of the project was the creation of two peer-to-peer guides to youth advocacy campaigning for peace: a) a training manual on empowering young people for peace activism and b) an intervention guide on effective youth-led advocacy campaigns for peace. The fellows generated these two educational resources based on their competences acquired during the above competence development process. For this, they have been supported and mentored by experts on the respective topics in their countries and partner organisations.