Training course: Peacebuilding Strategies for Civic Participation, Vienna

The course was coordinated by the Arab Organisation of Diplomacy (AOD) in Vienna, with EMOTiC among its partners. It brought together 30 youth workers aged 20 to 30 from Algeria, Austria, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan and Tunisia. The partner organisations also included INNOVA Academy (Algeria), Cultures du Monde (Tunisia), EPEKA, ICSE & co. (Italy), MOMENTUM (Egypt) and United Religions Initiative (Jordan).

Why peacebuilding

Young people are the cornerstone of the present and the future, yet the growing presence of conflict in many forms undermines their potential and can even hinder their basic participation in civic life. Youth workers are often on the front line with diverse and marginalised young people, but current approaches rarely prepare them for the power structures behind inequality or for handling conflict in their daily work. This Erasmus+ training course offered an emancipatory approach that questions those structures instead of accepting them.

Working on real community issues

Participants learned how to analyse community issues and how to design and implement initiatives that tackle a grassroots problem. Each person chose an issue affecting their local society, whether environmental, social, civic or political, from inclusion, education, digitalisation, human rights, gender and discrimination to poverty, employment, sustainability and climate change. All of these were approached through the framework of visible and invisible violence and shared concepts such as peace and transformation, as a way to find solutions and build constructive transformation skills.

The programme

The programme moved from understanding violence and exploring nonviolence to solidarity as a tool against violence, emotional and cognitive awareness, and communication as a tool for transformation. Participants then learned conflict analysis tools and applied them to a conflict of their own, before generating ideas, designing conflict transformation initiatives and working on strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation. Open space sessions gave room to share their own inputs.

The programme was also designed to take the group beyond the training room, with study visits to the United Nations in Vienna (Vienna International Centre) and to the Europa Experience multimedia centre. Daily reflection time, an intercultural night and a farewell party helped the group grow together.

Local initiatives

In national teams, participants designed local initiatives that tackle the marginalisation and social exclusion of young people, such as workshops, webinars, digital campaigns or interview series. Each team presented its problem, solution and intervention strategy and received feedback before taking its plan home.

The teams were supported after the training to implement their initiatives between December 2025 and February 2026. This local follow-up was an integral part of the course. The partners also aimed to compile a concise training guide for use at local level and to strengthen the links between formal education, non-formal learning, social involvement and social change.