Volunteers as peace agents

Background of the project: Grenzenlos is running international projects and exchanges since nearly 70 years. In the last years we dedicated our trainings to the topics of civil courage and human rights. We define ourselves as a peace organisation and are an official peace messenger through our network ICYE (www.icye.org). The Grenzenlos board of managers decided a theme for this and next year: We want to reflect on our starting point of volunteering exchanges “Peace Work”. We are already implementing a seminar in October 2018 where we explore the meaning of peace and it´s relation with international volunteering. This training course is built up on the content developed in the first seminar and focusing on how voluntary organizations can support their volunteers to become peace messengers and agents for peace. Within the training course we would like to extend the exchange and understanding of peace-work and include voluntary organizations from partner and MEDA countries. The training is part of a bigger strategy on promoting peace and the contribution of volunteering to it.

Aims and objectives

• To promote peace and fight against hate speeches
• To promote peace work within international volunteering projects
• To get inspired on how we can keep a peaceful society:
  • What can voluntary organisations and youth workers do?
  • How can volunteers become or remain peace messengers?
  • How can voluntary organizations reduce stereotypes of their volunteers instead of increasing them?
• Get to know to different approaches in preparing, mentoring and evaluating voluntary projects in order to support your volunteers to act as peace agents
• To have fruitful debates and learn about peace work among young people from all over Europe and Mediterranean countries

Who can participate? We are looking for participants who are active in their youth organization (volunteers, staff, mentors …) All participants should

• be 18+ (no upper age limit!)
• Involved in the work of your organisation (as a volunteer and/or worker)
• Able to attend the whole duration of the course
• Able to work in English
• Interested in peace work as such
• Ready to pass the knowledge on and to implement campaigns after the training.