“Exploring the Role of Youth in Reconciliation and Peacebuilding” is long term project which has as main aim to increase capacities of organizations to support peace building and reconciliation process in their communities with special attention to be paid to involvement of youth. The project is co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union and involves 8 partners YOUTH FOR SOCIAL CHANGES-Albania; NEVLADINO UDRUZENJE PRIMA-Montenegro; YOUTH ALLIANCE – KRUSEVO-North Macedonia; ASSOCIATA EURODEMOS-Romania; CENTER FOR EDUCATION AND TRAINING PRIZREN-Kosovo; IUVENTA NEVLADINA ORGANIZACIJA UDRUZENJE-Serbia; EUPHORIA-Greece and FUNDACJA IMIENIA BRACI SOŁUŃSKICH – CYRYLA METODEGO –Poland.

Project objectives: 

• To enhance participant’s knowledge on concepts and terminologies in reconciliation and peacebuilding;
• To enhance participant's skills to analyse the situations in their communities and to use various tools for reconciliation and peacebuilding, especially tools based on storytelling and digital storytelling;
• To increase social skills of the participants to start processes supporting active participation of youth in reconciliation and peacebuilding in their communities;
• To raise awareness of local communities on the importance of reconciliation, peace-building;
• To support creating common space of dialogue in involved communities;
• To increase capacities of organizations to design and implement innovative programmes that effectively address specific issues in their communities;
• To raise knowledge of participants on Erasmus + Programme and support creating partnerships and ideas for future projects in framework of peacebuilding and reconciliation.

Project activities: 

Capacity building  national activities

One of the project activities, was organizing four national capacity building activities in all of the participating countries. Youth Alliance organized four trainings on four different topics: “The role of peacebuilding in regional transformation processes”, “Cooperation and partnerships in peacebuilding processes”, “Youth lead transformation of the peacebuilding processes in the region” and “The role of Erasmus + experience in the processes of reconciliation and peacebuilding”. In the four trainings, we had 70+ young people as participants. The outcomes of the activities were:

• 70+ young people with raised awareness about different perspectives about peacebuilding and reconciliation processes in the region.
• Youth trainers with raised capacities for further work with young people
• Raised awareness among the broad young audience (YAK followers on social media) regarding the youth lead transformation of the peacebuilding processes in the region.

• Increased YAK capacities regarding implementing and targeting young people interested in activities focused on peacebuilding processes.