The Peace Webinars 

Featuring peace-builders around the globe teaching practical peace skills

Welcome to the YPAN Webinars. Every Friday of July 2020 we brought new ideas, opportunities and deep talks. Not only for you to get a new learning tool, but also the practical skill that you will be able to use in your daily life.

Why we did this?

In the educational systems we are missing the elements of community buildingpeace-building elementsemotional literacy and mechanisms supporting finding the life purpose.

Thus, we wanted to create youth-friendly online spaces with webinars of youth experts for the development of young people`s skills in peacebuilding, community building, non-violent communication and group reflections.

The webinars finilised with the “Festival of Knowledge” – learning space run by  12 peacebuilders sharing their skills and stories .

THE PROGRAM

Visual Art for Peace

In this webinar, participants had the chance to learn some of the theoretical bases which point to the potential of visual art-making in peace work and see relevant examples from the project Color Up Peace. The participants received links to visual art resources, which they could use in peace-oriented projects, along with suggestions on how to use them.

[expander_maker id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]The speaker,  Lisa Glybchenko is an artist and a peace worker. Four years ago she started the project Color Up Peace, which invites people from all over the world to send pictures of what peace represents to them. Lisa turns the photos into coloring pages to facilitate dialogue about peace – also through collective visual art-making, to support exchange of visions of peace and to challenge the prevalence of conflict-centered visual material. Lisa is currently finishing her Master’s degree in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research at Tampere University, Finland. In her master’s research “A Visual Arts-Based Approach to Peace Mediation: Exploring the Conceptual Potential of Visual Art-Making in Peace Mediation”, Lisa also explored the links between visual art-making and peace work – this time specifically mediation.[/expander_maker]

Youth Voices Methodology

In this webinar participants had a chance to see how we can use artistic elements we produce every day on our phones to create a process to help us address topics of importance, such as peace and peace building, in any community you are working with. By using interesting and creative approaches in analysis of art, participants was also provided with the knowledge on how to generate excitement and produce relevant, engaging results which can also bring policy and decision makers to the table. [expander_maker id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”] Nemanja Tenjovic holds a Master’s degree in Political Science, International relations. He worked with and for different governments and international non-governmental organizations and youth groups in countries such as Serbia, Canada, Germany and the United States of America mainly on topics of peace, reconciliation and development. He worked with different youth groups, government official groups, experts etc. Today, he is more focused on creation of effective policies and their implementation in different fields and enjoys a good book.[/expander_maker]

Inclusion for Peace

“Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance,” says diversity and inclusion expert V. Myers. We invited participants to dance with us.

During this webinar we explored the examples of good practices and experiences, analyzed how inclusion (tools) work in practice, and discuss the ways and opportunities of how to implement the inclusive mindset in practice for creating open and peaceful environment around us. [expander_maker id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”] The webinar was held by Laura Alčiauskaitė, who is an YPAN member and a professional psychologist, currently finishing her PhD studies on the fields of positive psychology. Laura has been actively involved in Human Rights since 2014 and has experience working with diverse groups of people (e.g., youth coming from social risk families, refugees and migrants, young people with physical or mental disabilities, etc). Besides this, she describes herself as „overly optimistic that we can in fact overcome barriers and have a truly diverse and inclusive community”. [/expander_maker]

Communication for Peace 

Have you ever thought that communication can be non-violent? That it can be used in a way that shows your needs and requests in an easy way?

This webinar focused on the Non-Violent Communication method. A new way of communication that make you see things in your life from the big perspective by using empathization and listening to others. We went through the giraffe and jackal way of speaking and practiced how to implement the NVC talks in our daily life.[expander_maker id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]

Jorge is a communicator and trainer in peacebuilding with the YPAN. He has been working in more than 5 training courses and different youth activities to foster human rights and peace education along with community building actions. Besides being a member of the YPAN, he is part of the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe.

Agata is a lawyer but also a lover of training for youth in peacebuilding and human rights. She has been working more than 10 years in the field of training with, for and by young people on peace education, anti-discrimination, human rights and peaceful communication. She believes NVC is a great tool for young people willing to transform conflicts in their lives. Agata cooperates also with the Council of Europe in  trainings of peacebuilding for young people.[/expander_maker]

The project is co-funded by the Peace First organisation and the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union

//The Webinars Team
Agata, Clare, Chau, Inanc, Jorge, Laura, Lisa, Lutza, Karen, Nevena, Oguzhan, Seg