PEACE PROJECTS
Since 2014, hundreds of youth-led peace projects have been imagined, designed, and implemented by certified NewGen Peacebuilders.
Conflict and violence don’t just happen. They result from direct, cultural and structural decisions that we make as people and societies.
Peace doesn't just happen. It's a practice, process, and way of solving problems. Research indicates that learning and experiences through which young people can put peacebuilding into practice are essential to building a sustainable culture of peace.
Students who complete peace projects become certified NewGen Peacebuilders and join a global network of young peacebuilders. Many alumni have received awards, recognition and scholarships.
Education for peacebuilding, not just education about peace.
Live trainings and curricular units available through NewGen Peacebuilders / Youth & Peace in Action emphasize education for peacebuilding, not just education about peace. In each training, participants are supported to move from analyzing conflicts to visualizing peace projects and then to actual project implementation. This occurs through the use of a NewGen Peacebuilders planning process, guidance from trained mentors, and monitoring of peace projects.
Ten Categories, Countless Projects
Teams develop a project that addresses one or more of ten categories suggested by the YPA team. Rather than words like "Mental Health" or "Hunger,” all categories leverage language consistent with positive peacebuilding in order to focus our attention beyond the negative toward positive ways to achieve conditions of well being for all.
Tools and Frameworks
To plan peace projects, students learn to use established frameworks to consider how power, conflict, violence and peace intersect. Among these are four that are well-known in conflict resolution and peacebuilding: Galtung’s Triangle of Violence to distinguish different types of violence; 5 Spheres of Peace to examine right relationships; Eight Pillars of Peace to understand systemic drivers of conflict & peace; Conflict Mapping to analyze a specific conflict.
Peace Project Case Studies
#RiceForLife
When a team of NewGen Peacebuilders from East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, NC, decided to focus on hunger, their journey led them to create an innovative peace project that they titled #RiceforLife – a drive to collect food donations in ways that build bridges between students, the community and diverse, global cultures.
Their goal was to help create peace by completely changing the intentions, structure and process of their school’s annual hunger drive to be more culturally sensitive and inclusive.
Foster the Future
More than 30 students and adult mentors in the first NewGen Peacebuilders cohort in Santa Rosa, CA, asked: “Would it be possible to work on one peacebuilding opportunity as one big team?”
The team concluded that they were all interested in creating a peace project related to young people being safe and cared for. From the perspective of these NewGen Peacebuilders the feeling of having a stable home life is a human right. They imagined a project to serve children living in foster care. They titled it “Foster the Future.”
#TomaTuVida
In Argentina, traffic accidents related to alcohol are a leading cause of death for young people. A NewGen Peacebuilders project team in the city of Tandil, Buenos Aires Province, created a campaign specifically for high school students. They named the project #TomaTuVida, creating a play on words in Spanish. Their campaign suggested that too much drinking can “take your life” (end it). Simultaneously, it conveyed that responsible drinking, as well as avoiding drinking and driving, is a way to “take hold of your life” (be responsible for it).