● Pairing youth in post war/current war countries with youth in peaceful countries to co-create a project that each will bring to their communities.
● These groups of youth gathering untold narratives and telling the stories of what peace means to their communities to foster dialogue and action.
● Community-based Social Impact Projects for conflict resolution and sustainable peace (podcasts, magazines, social media) being created by these youth.
● An opportunity to showcase their completed action project to a global audience.
Personal narrative and storytelling are linked to critical consciousness raising and provide an avenue to break cycles of conflict and violence. As an extension to the phase 1 curriculum, this second phase is built on an exploration of personal narrative as a way to engage learners in empathy and critical consciousness thinking.
As the youth delve into the human stories within their communities, they will generate ideas for conflict resolution and develop, design, create, and implement Social Impact Projects that will educate for a sustainable and more peaceful future. The youth will become agents of change within their communities addressing the global, socially pressing issue of human conflict.
The program aims to develop and deepen learners’ understanding of the complexities of peace through a robust youth centered approach in which they will explore two core overarching questions:
How do we build a better peace?
What does peace mean to you?
Projects will be developed based on youth-led research in which they will conduct interviews and hold dialogue sessions with their partner group to strengthen their relationships as they learn about their experiences, and shared interests. These interviews and dialogue sessions will inform the creation of the youth action-oriented projects based on community needs related to the building of more peaceful communities. This dialogical approach to community healing and learning will be a cornerstone of the pilot program’s collection of qualitative data.
A network of international youth leaders will mentor participants as they navigate the creation of their peace projects, guiding participants through a collaborative feedback and revision process, ultimately leading to refinement of their community, action oriented peace projects which will be shared worldwide on platforms for further youth engagement and discussion.
The facilitators of the Imagine Next Gen Voices Reflect on Peace program will take the role of teacher/learners – or Trainers of Trainers (ToT) emphasizing our educational philosophy that true learning begins with the teacher-student relationship operating simultaneously for all participants. The program is not hierarchical, but will support a collaboration of learning within the program, the community, and the larger global context.
The pilot project will be evaluated throughout the process as well as upon completion to determine efficacy of design and implementation, resources used, and the sustainability of results. The evaluation will enable the incorporation of lessons learned into the decision making process, ensuring refinement of the project moving forward.
Creative storytelling workshops will inspire youth participants and support their action projects through framing a narrative around the issue they feel most compelled to address. Workshop topics will include:, how to tell stories through photographs; how to tell stories through video; how to tell stories through social media; how to tell stories through nonfiction writing.
Technological workshops related to skills and editing for the various storytelling formats will support their creation of the actionable projects.
Capacity-building workshops based on the individual needs of each peace project will include: needs assessment; project management; effective communication; introduction to advocacy and campaigns; monitoring and evaluation; using social media as an advocacy tool; project implementation; project monitoring and evaluation; project Identification of lessons learned; and many more.
The pilot project will be administered through partner classrooms in Ukraine, the United States, and Northern Ireland, and will be delivered through a hybrid model with both virtual and in-person components. In-person training will be led by GenHR and VII Foundation facilitators.
An online platform will allow for the collection of data on the process of participants in cultivating dialogue for sustainable peace; provide a digital space for the participants to learn; and become a hub for community, fostering communication within and among the pilot participants and trainers, thereby facilitating mentorship and dialogue across diverse cultures
It is our hope, together with our partners at the VII Foundation with whom we created the Imagine: NextGen Voices Reflect on Peace curriculum, that through the implementation of this pilot and future programming we are able to cultivate deep imagination in the global youth so that they may envision and create a sustainable and peaceful future world.
We believe in charting a world free from human rights abuses and genocide, through the development of multidisciplinary curricula and custom human rights education programs. With the ongoing and protracted nature of human conflict and the unnecessary and unjust suffering it causes as a consequence to millions around the globe, we believe firmly in the power of education to empower youth in post-war countries and current conflict-zones. Our NextGen Voices Reflect on Peace curriculum was created as an ongoing educational outreach program to foster empathic dialogue, build storytelling and narrative skills, and engage in compassionate action within and for communities, with a focus on conflict resolution and sustainable peace. We strongly believe this pilot and the succeeding programs are tantamount to youth led solutions for a peaceful world!
Generation Human Rights (GenHR) who are designing the pilot framework curriculum and professional development materials, is a human rights education nonprofit empowering and engaging youth locally and globally to chart a world free from human rights abuses and genocide. generationhumanrights.org
The VII Foundation is a nonprofit media education organization transforming visual journalism by empowering new voices and creating stories that advocate change. The NextGen Voices Reflect on Peace curriculum was developed in collaboration with the VII Foundation using the project "Imagine: Reflections on Peace", an initiative of the VII Foundation. theviifoundation.org
The Human Responsibility Accelerator (HRA) is a center for the design and development of digital learning platforms, training and assessment tools for learning experiences on global human responsibility. highresolves.org/
