The aim of the two-year global project ‘Building Bridges: Youth Work for Peace and Dialogue’ is to promote peace education and dialogue through youth work in developing countries and in Europe by initiating a cross continental approach. Across the globe we are seeing increasing rising divisions in societies and tensions between different social groups. There is an increased strain on young people due to political and socioeconomic pressures and groups of young people are blaming other groups for problems being created by the political elite. A rise of populism and nationalism is seeing groups being pitted against each other. Youth can be the power to change this with over 1.8 billion young people in the world - its largest youth population ever. Building Bridges addresses the need for a two-pronged approach of education and dialogue to tackle social exclusion and overcome the societal conflicts through youth work. We live in a globalised world and therefore need global solutions to local problems - hence this project will bring together partners from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America.The project objectives are to:1. Train, support and inspire youth workers in developing countries to enact localised projects on peace education and dialogue between conflict groups of youths to promote inclusive societies and social cohesion2. Give participants the tools to develop their core competences (knowledge, skills, attitudes) and foster the promotion of key European values that are transferable in their future education, employment and personal development3. Develop, test, publish and disseminate tools on peace education and dialogue using good practice already established in Europe that can be adapted to regional contexts through innovative ICT tools4. Increase the youth sector’s understanding of the realities of peace, conflict and dialogue on a global level through research, best practice case studies and policy proposals on the topic of peace and dialogue5. Promote quality standards in youth work by increasing youth organisations’ and local authorities’ expertise in quality non-formal education, the human rights approach, and project and financial managementThis heart of this project is two training courses for youth workers - in peace education and in inclusion and dialogue respectively - and the publication of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the theme. Youth workers will plan their own regional training programmes to disseminate the project outcomes and outputs after this project. The project will also capacity build the leadership of partner organisations and representatives from local authorities or local governments of the partner countries in project and financial management in order for them to support the youth workers’ localised projects. The Building Bridges toolkit will be published at the end of the project in July, accompanying the MOOC, and a closing conference in Brussels will take place for NGOs and EU institutions.
The aim of the two-year global project ‘Building Bridges: Youth Work for Peace and Dialogue’ is to promote peace education and dialogue through youth work in developing countries and in Europe by initiating a cross continental approach. Across the globe we are seeing increasing rising divisions in societies and tensions between different social groups. There is an increased strain on young people due to political and socioeconomic pressures and groups of young people are blaming other groups for problems being created by the political elite. A rise of populism and nationalism is seeing groups being pitted against each other. Youth can be the power to change this with over 1.8 billion young people in the world - its largest youth population ever. Building Bridges addresses the need for a two-pronged approach of education and dialogue to tackle social exclusion and overcome the societal conflicts through youth work. We live in a globalised world and therefore need global solutions to local problems - hence this project will bring together partners from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America.The project objectives are to:1. Train, support and inspire youth workers in developing countries to enact localised projects on peace education and dialogue between conflict groups of youths to promote inclusive societies and social cohesion2. Give participants the tools to develop their core competences (knowledge, skills, attitudes) and foster the promotion of key European values that are transferable in their future education, employment and personal development3. Develop, test, publish and disseminate tools on peace education and dialogue using good practice already established in Europe that can be adapted to regional contexts through innovative ICT tools4. Increase the youth sector’s understanding of the realities of peace, conflict and dialogue on a global level through research, best practice case studies and policy proposals on the topic of peace and dialogue5. Promote quality standards in youth work by increasing youth organisations’ and local authorities’ expertise in quality non-formal education, the human rights approach, and project and financial managementThis heart of this project is two training courses for youth workers - in peace education and in inclusion and dialogue respectively - and the publication of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the theme. Youth workers will plan their own regional training programmes to disseminate the project outcomes and outputs after this project. The project will also capacity build the leadership of partner organisations and representatives from local authorities or local governments of the partner countries in project and financial management in order for them to support the youth workers’ localised projects. The Building Bridges toolkit will be published at the end of the project in July, accompanying the MOOC, and a closing conference in Brussels will take place for NGOs and EU institutions.