Education for Peace — Education on Peace
It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it.
And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
SCI Switzerland begann in 2020 with a training series around Peace in Practice.
What was the project-series about?
The project connected the idea of peace to the daily actions of young people across Europe and the Middle East and empowered them to act for peace in everyday life.
The goal was to build the capacity of youth workers and volunteers to gain competences essential for building a peaceful and nonviolent world.
The project’s main capacity-building activities were 5 training courses, the first one online. The training courses gathered participants from around 20 countries who were volunteers, activists and youth workers working for peace. Each event meant around 6 full days of intensive, all-day-long learning.
Who was involved?
We set up a partnership of 13 organisations from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa:
PVN Albania, CVS Bulgaria, SCI Catalunya, SCI France, Steps for Sustainable Development Jordan, GAIA Kosovo, Center for Intercultural Dialogue North Macedonia, Alshmoh Cultural Center Palestine, SCI Poland, ‘‘COME OUT’’ Group Serbia, SCI Switzerland, Association Volontariat Sans Frontière Tunisia and Youth and Change Association Turkey.
Project results
- The project resulted in mor than 100 empowered participants, who – back in their countries – continued to organise peace-related educational activities for youngsters and other groups (see exaples below).
- The impact on our 13 participating organisations was an increased quality and quantity of workshops, seminars, and other peace-themed educational activities, as well as more networking and stronger collaboration among us.
- The Peace training series also contributed to building a society where all people lived together with mutual respect and without recourse to any form of violence to solve conflict.
Why such a project?
schools in our countries rarely teach peace education and that’s why it’s up to us – the civil sector – to bridge this gap with high-quality non-formal education actions
for this, we also need to educate and inspire new generations of youth workers and volunteers, who will then run local awareness-raising and capacity-building programmes
not every organisation has adequate knowledge and tools to train new peace educators, while SCI Switzerland specifies in this topic
Overview of the Training Courses
Peace in Practice
30 Ocotber – 11 November 2020 (online)
“Peace in Practice” gathered as many as 30 participants from 17 countries who were volunteers, activists of NGOs working for peace and youth workers. The training course shed some light on the three levels of peace (« inner peace », « peace with others » and « peace with nature »). The group was highly motivated to explore this topic and over 2 weeks, the participants met for 40 hours of Zoom-meetings!
Read the evaluation report online!
Peace with Others
19-25 May 2022
“Peace with Others” explored the concept of peace and peace with others and supported the participants in gaining competences essential for building a peaceful and nonviolent world. The training comprised of sessions on a range of topics, including the role of a peacebuilder, emotional and social intelligence, nonviolent communication, and conflict resolution.
Read the evaluation report online!
Inner Peace and Peace with Nature
13-19 October 2022
“Inner Peace and Peace with Nature” focused on the aforementioned two pillars of peace, supporting the participants to become changemakers and activists. The event comprised of sessions that tackled themes such as levels of peace, volunteering for peace, happiness, gratitude, mindfulness, how to deal with stress, sustainability, and shinrin-yoku.
Read the impact report online!
Training of Trainers for Peace
16-23 November 2023
This training course trained multipliers who – upon their return home – whre able to organise high-quality educational events for peace (workshops, webinars, meetings, games etc.). The main focus was on how to plan, design, and deliver high-quality educational activities in offline and online settings.
Read the impact report online!
Peace Education Market
18-25 April 2024
The event brought together educators from 13 countries to learn, discuss and share, empowering them to enhance the quality and quantity of their peace education activities. Participants were able to learn more about specific peace-related topics, such as Nonviolent Communication, mindfulness and conflict resolution.
Read the impact report online!
Engagement for a peaceful future starts first with a single individual, but the combined effect of single numerous efforts brings a change to the whole world!
Voices of volunteers
“No matter if you are into your looks due to the shameless disregard of an unfulfilled soul, your language barrier fights your innate cheer, your name originates within an academic triumph, you have a cutting-edge style for visual alternatives, you are a victim of morality or you simply try not to burst into laughter aiming to hide the desperation for humankind, I can positively tell you one thing: you are not alone.”
“We had sessions on gratitude, inner peace techniques, happiness, stress… Gośka and Natalie enabled us to truly reflect on our lives and realize how many good things we already have. What I personally got from this training is the appreciation of my life and the realization that the key to happiness is not wanting to have more than what I really need. Thank you for this beautiful, heartwarming experience!”
“The time spent on the project was surely an investment that inspired me and helped me feel prepared to conduct an initiative on the topic of Peace. Goska and Natalie were two radiating suns which managed to create this very warm and accepting community of people who will continue partnering to make the world a better place.”
Gergana from Bulgaria, participant – Training of Trainers for Peace
The training was an amazing experience during which I gained new skills and tools, met inspiring people from different countries and cultures, and exchanged knowledge and ideas. I am very happy and grateful that I could take part in this training and I can definitely recommend it.”
Martyna from Poland, participant – Peace Education Market
Follow-up actions
The participants were inspired and challenged to put their new knowledge and skills into practice in their home country.
Two overviews give you examples of activities organised by the participants of “Peace for Chage – Change for Peace” and of “Educators for Peace”.They organised various workshops, presentations, discussions, a calendar of poems, the calendar “Inner Peace Adventure”, they wrote articles, etc.
Want to read more on peace? The SCI Switzerland ‘Political Positions’ working group has published a new position paper “How to understand our pacifism” that gets to the heart of this question – ethically sound, historically thoughtful and politically committed.
“My Peace Journal”, a guide to encourage reflection and action for peace
One of the tangible outcomes of the project was “My Peace Journal”, a personal diary providing space for reflection, encouraging thinking about peace and acting for peace, available both printed and in electronic form.
Peace in Practice – Poster
“What will I do for Peace today?” – We are happy to present you this inspiring peace poster which is the outcome from the training course “Peace in Practice”.Below you can download the beautiful poster in English, different colours, sizes and with different symbols. We already have the versions in Albanian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and soon more!
The poster was designed by our amazing co-worker and activist Sara Castillo. Thank you!
We hope you can be inspired by these small inputs for your daily practice of peace!
Still have questions?
If you are interested in the project activities and would like to get in touch, write to us at peace.practice@scich.org
This project is financially supported by Movetia. Movetia promotes exchange, mobility and cooperation within the fields of education, training and youth work – in Switzerland, Europe and worldwide.