ENGAGEMENT 2.0: Community Social Peacebuilding

About the project

Young people are the cornerstone of the present and the future, and their social participation needs to be strengthened. ENGAGEMENT 2.0: Building a Sense of Initiative and Intervention was a local pilot project by EMOTiC, built around a six-day training of multipliers on community social peacebuilding in Vienna. It brought together 25 young leaders aged 18 to 30 based in Austria, citizens and residents, with diverse intercultural backgrounds and disciplines, to become active changemakers in their communities.

The training followed ENGAGEMENT 1.0 and used the same core idea: many community issues, from environment, inclusion and diversity to education, digitalisation, human rights, gender, poverty, employment and climate change, can be understood through the framework of visible and invisible violence. This framework served as a guide for analysing social conflicts and for developing constructive ways to address them.

Participants began by defining and discussing concepts such as conflict, violence, peace, solidarity and transformation to build a shared understanding, followed by theoretical input on visible and invisible violence. As the days went on, conversations turned to culture, conflict definitions and models for analysing the roots of violence and conflict. Educational games had a strong effect, letting participants experience communication as a core conflict transformation tool.

In the last days, participants chose a local issue, formed small groups and designed their own initiatives with implementation plans, setting out the problem, the solution and the intervention. They learned how to apply for funding through a Solidarity Project under the European Solidarity Corps, presented their ideas for feedback and kept receiving support from the EMOTiC team in the months after the training.

Four follow-up initiatives came out of the training: a mental health talk, a civic education workshop, an awareness-raising vlog about migrants' issues and a community garden. All four were still running when EMOTiC published its report. Together, ENGAGEMENT 1.0 and 2.0 trained 50 young people from Austria.

Openness, respect for others' views and the diversity of cultures, languages, genders and backgrounds made the training richer, and participants bonded strongly. As George Mintas put it: "As this was the first training that I have ever attended, I was quite nervous at the beginning. Now, at the end, I am very glad to have been part of such an amazing experience. I have gained new knowledge and skills in conflict transformation and met interesting new people."

The training was free of charge thanks to the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe, which covered training, materials, meals, breaks and transport, with EMOTiC as main coordinator and beneficiary. Participants needed at least B1 English, committed to at least 80 per cent of the programme, signed a learning agreement and took part in a follow-up initiative.