P.A.C.E. - Peace and Conflict Education is a regional project implemented by Youth for Peace in cooperation with the Balkans Let's Get Up! Organisation from Serbia and Udehtim i Lire from Albania. The implementation of the project is supported by the Regional Youth Cooperation Office - RYCO and the European Union.

Objectives of the project:

  1. To build capacities of youth workers and CSOs in the field of peace building and reconciliation with emphasis on capacities to foster effective implementation of peace education contents and values
  2. To create favourable environment where youth from the three parties can gather and go through transformative experience of dialogue and understanding “other side”

The project will be implemented over a period of 7 months in which two trainings for trainers in the field of peace education will be organized in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as youth exchange in Albania. In addition, one of the outputs of the project, will be creation of a peace education manual for trainers with a special focus on the Western Balkan.

The first training within the P.A.C.E. - Peace and Conflict Education project held in Belgrade

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During the period from June 18th to 23rd, 2021, Belgrade hosted the first training for facilitators within the P.A.C.E. - Peace and Conflict Education project. The training brought together 15 young facilitators and trainers from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. During the training, participants had the opportunity to learn and exchange experiences on topics in the field of peace education, but also to get acquainted with the methods, tools, and facilitation techniques that are most suitable for peace education. Through 5 days of training, participants together with facilitators through interactive exercises and through a participant-oriented approach discussed the topic of identity, stereotypes, and prejudices in the Balkans, construction and deconstruction of narratives, analysis, and transformation of conflict, and use of dialogue as a way to resolve conflicts and facilitate communication between people.

In addition to thematically oriented workshops, participants also had the opportunity to learn about what facilitation means, what their facilitation style is, as well as how to create and facilitate workshops in a team. During the last two days of the training, the participants worked in teams on creating their own workshops, which they then had the opportunity to implement and get feedback from other participants and training facilitators. The training ended with an evaluation session, a discussion about further possible engagement in the project, and a certificate award ceremony that the participants handed out to each other with messages about what they could learn from each other during the training.

Below are some of the impressions that the participants shared with us during the evaluation process:
„I met other participants from the region and I learned from their experience and their good practice. A great opportunity for networking between young people that work in the field of peace and conflict education.“
„It is important that we understand each other. Sometimes is not comfortable to 'wear somebody's shoes' but we have to in order to understand and feel each other identity, habits, pain, joy, tradition.. and that is what is gonna help us get close to each other. We need each other and we have to live together.“
„I am at my Master degree in peace studies and so that’s why it is challenging for facilitators to tell me something I didn’t know before. However, I still heard something new and something different and learned new approaches on the “old” topics. I am very satisfied.“

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