Youth 4 Peace

Europe needs you NOW! Get involved in an international team for Europe: Take part in European youth conferences in Ireland, Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland, Germany, Portugal or Spain. Experience VR trainings and democracy simulations. Get into conversation with minorities, create a YouTube channel and give Europe a voice. Our project “Youth4Peace” offers you these and other options. You want to be actively involved? Then register with us using the form by March 30, 2024.

Link to the registration form

The European Union is supranational community - unique in the world – and its most important achievement is peace: lasting, positive peace. This peace is based on democracy, the protection of human and citizens’ rights, freedom, respect for diversity, solidarity, and cooperation. In the last 70 years, living these values has transformed Europe from a war-torn continent to one of the most prosperous and attractive regions in the world to live in. The war of aggression against Ukraine, however, dramatically changed global and European landscapes and has placed the importance of peace and what peace really means at the centre of European debate.

Peace is also at the centre of the project „Youth4Peace“. Based on the understanding that positive peace is not only the absence of war, but the absence of all structural and indirect violence, it becomes evident that European values such as democracy and the protection of human and individual rights are prerequisites for positive peace.

Studies and observations have shown that young Europeans have insufficient understanding of the link between positive peace and democracy. Therefore, Youth4Peace’s main objective is to engage youngsters – especially youth with fewer opportunities - to reflect on democracy, rights and freedoms – always through the lens of peace versus conflict. This way, we want to promote empowerment, participation, active citizenship and social cohesion among young Europeans from all social backgrounds.

More precisely, the aims of our project „Youth4Peace“ are

• To bring together young people from different countries and backgrounds, thus creating a dialogue on positive peace and democracy, as well as on the future of Europe;
• To strengthen the cooperation between the participating organisations through the creation of a dedicated joint metaverse youth training space, a joint Moodle training platform and a joint YouTube channel and website
• To increase the resilience of young people to disinformation, propaganda and harmful political messages through encouraging them to study, discuss and analyse the implications of the current crises, and form their own informed opinions;
• To improve youngsters‘ political awareness and efficacy and help them become skilled and active participants in all levels of democratic processes and societies;
• To encourage empathy with people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds; increasing youngsters‘ intercultural awareness and cultural competences;
• To foster and deepen the political and social participation of young people at local, regional, national and European levels;
• To promote diversity, intercultural and inter-religious dialogue;
• To enhance critical thinking and media literacy among young people;
• To strengthen young people’s sense of initiative, notably with the focus on the 2024 European elections and
• To enable young people to express their opinions and thus enable them to influence elected policy-makers, public administrations, interest groups, and civil society organisations.

We want to achieves these goals by

• Carrying out eight European youth conferences with an estimated total of 2000 participants on the following topics:
  • EU as Guarantor for positive peace
  • The War in the information space and the ways it disrupts the democratic processes in Europe
  • Solidarity and Diversity
  • Human Rights and Individual Freedoms
  • Youth for Pluralism
  • Environment and Climate Change
  • Europe as a global power
  • Youth for the Future
• Developing a metaverse and training material in order to carry out three VR trainings with a total of 3500 young participants on the following topics
  • The EU and democracy as guarantor for Positive Peace
  • Disinformation, Propaganda, Hate Speech, Conspiracy Theories and Fake news
  • Active citizenship and Ways of Democratic Participation
• Prompting youngsters to conduct 1000 interviews and publish them on a YouTube channel “Stories of Europe”
• Providing a total project outreach of 20.000 persons

Youth4Peace is taking place from December 2023 till the end of November 2025.

Partners involved in the project are

Redefine Associacao para a investigacao educacao e desenvolviment, Portugal

Asociacion ideas y debate, Spain

Miasto Starachowice, Poland

Sdruzhenie svoboden mladezhki tsentur, Bulgaria

KUFF environment and health association clg, Ireland

Uluslararasi stratejik yonetim dernegi, Turkey

The project is co-funded by the European Union.