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Community Conflict Transformation Through Youth Work

- a professional development training for youth workers & youth leaders -

- in Vienna, Austria from 11 to 18 August 2023 -

GENESIS OF THE TRAINING:
Youth are the cornerstone of the presence and the future. However, the increased prevalence of various forms of conflict is not only undermining their fullest potential but even hindering their basic participation in civic life. Therefore, youth organisations and their members are required to take action and support the positive transformation of conflicts in order to realize the full and meaningful participation of youth in society. It is crucial to realize the positive sides of conflicts and work collectively towards solutions instead of just hyping up the problems and issues.

Hence, our training "​Community Conflict Transformation Through Youth Work" for 30 participants from Austria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, and France with the support of ERASMUS+ of the European Union, aimed to train youth workers and leaders on how to analyse community issues and design and implement initiatives to tackle a grassroots problem to achieve positive change. Issues could be environmental, social, civic, political or any other conflictual area that affects their local society. As a participant, they chose a specific issue to focus on and tackle during this training to design an initiative with other participants from their country and implement this small initiative after the training. The range of possible issues to tackle varied from mental health, environment, inclusion, diversity, education, digitalisation, human rights, gender, integration, equality, solidarity, discrimination, justice, culture, and youth empowerment, to topics such as poverty, employment, social public services, sustainability, politics, and climate change. All these diverse topics can be understood, in the framework of visible and invisible violence. Therefore we chose this framework as a method of finding solutions and developing transformation skills and tools to address these topics in a constructive way to achieve a positive change in the community.

LEARNING EXPERIENCE:
During this training, 30 participants first learned about the framework of visible and invisible violence, including major concepts such as "violence", "conflict", "peace" and "transformation" to build a common understanding amongst all. Further, the participants were introduced to tools to analyse an existing conflict and think about possible solutions. As a next step, participants worked in small groups to design their own initiatives that address any topic that they wish to influence. Participants were supported during the training to design a comprehensive local initiative with an actual implementation plan. All groups presented their initiatives (problem, solution and intervention) and got feedback. After the training, all groups have been further supported by the organising team to implement these newly designed initiatives as a follow-up to this training on the local level.

The aims and objectives of this project were:
1. Explore current social conflicts affecting youth from different perspectives;
2. Enforce conflict transformation processes as an empowering tool for youth civic participation;
3. Foster youth social engagement as a tool and an opportunity for social community transformation;
4. Provide innovative and structured ways to positively intervene socially and motivate youngsters to engage locally;
5. Enhance youth workers’ understanding of non-violent methods for civic participation and social transformation;
6. Support the youth workers in acquiring skills to improve their civic involvement as agents of change in their societies;
7. Compile a concise training guide that can be further used on the local level;
8. Reinforce synergies between formal education, non-formal training, societal involvement, and social change.

Multimedia Outcomes: Training Course: Community Conflict Transformation Through Youth Work

Multimedia Outcomes: Training Course: Community Conflict Transformation Through Youth Work
1. What is a Conflict?
01:22
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1. What is a Conflict?

2. What is Conflict Analysis?
01:24
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2. What is Conflict Analysis?

3. Conflict Analysis Tool (Problem Tree)
00:43
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3. Conflict Analysis Tool (Problem Tree)

4. Conflict Analysis Tool (PIN Model)
02:06
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4. Conflict Analysis Tool (PIN Model)

5. Conflict Analysis Tool (Actors Mapping)
03:30
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5. Conflict Analysis Tool (Actors Mapping)

6. Online form of intervention
01:30
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6. Online form of intervention

7. Offline form of intervention
01:55
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7. Offline form of intervention

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 Impressions from the Local Follow-up Initiatives 

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