Strengthening peace education for preventing conflicts

<< Background >>We applied for this project to address the growing need in Europe for tools for training people in practices of building peace and preventing violent conflicts. We wanted to contribute to this by developing adult educators’ competences to train their learners in maintaining peace and finding peaceful solutions to conflicts. In the small-scale project, we wanted to strengthen our organizations' ability to respond to this issue by developing our own capacities. We also wanted to create a basis and to find potential partners for a long-term project, where we would develop a new peace training programme on a European level.<< Objectives >>The project had two main objectives: (1) Increasing the capacity of the participating organisations, and their staff, to support conflict-affected people’s efforts to build peace. We wanted to increase these target groups' knowledge of the needs for peace education and peace education practices.(2) Identifying potential partners and stakeholders, and collecting best practices related to peacebuilding. We wanted to create the basis for a long-term peace education project, where we would design a European-wide peace training programme.<< Implementation >>We implemented three main activities:(1) An exchange of knowledge among interested parties regarding the needs and practices of peace training and conflict resolution. We researched adult learners’ and adult educators’ views and needs with regards to peace training via a survey for adult learners and educators, organised a TPM in Finland among the partner organisations as well as a workshop for external stakeholders, and wrote a report of our findings.(2) A virtual workshop on best practices organised from Poland, along with a second TPM. We invited experts and other interested parties to the virtual workshop, organised the workshop itself in the form of a discussion on peace training and an exchange of practices, and wrote a report of the practices and ideas collected during the workshop. Finally, this activity resulted in two KA2 cooperation project applications with different consortiums.(3) Dissemination activities, which included social media posts, including an update on EPALE, posts on the participating organisations' websites, internal dissemination at the participating organisations and external dissemination with organisations in our networks, as well as individual meetings with potential partner organisations.<< Results >>The project had the following concrete outputs: A report on the research phase (survey results) and exchange of knowledge (workshop in Kauniainen, Finland) in activity 1.A report on the virtual workshop held in Warsaw, Poland in activity 2.In addition, the project increased the knowledge and competences of the staff at the participating organisations to implement and develop peace training in the future. The participating organisations were able to expand their networks on a European level, finding partners for future projects, as well as other organisations with whom more informal cooperation could be established.Finally, the project led to a KA2 ADU project application led by one of the partners, Työväen Akatemia, for developing a European-wide peace education programme in the field of adult education (Teach Peace). Moreover, the project led to a separate KA2 YOU project application in Poland, led by Fundacja Wspierania Dialogu “Rozmawiajmy”.