The training course “Youth Diplomats” took place between 4th – 10th of May in Torremolinos, Málaga area. Partner NGOs in this project were Nooruse Maja from Estonia, ADEL Slovakia, Alternativi International from Bulgaria, Active Youth for Europe from Italy, Institute for Cultural Relations Policy from Hungary and Asociación Projuven from Spain (coordinator).
The project aimed to equip youth workers involved in international youth work to develop projects in the field of peace building through raising awareness about the necessity to follow a youth diplomacy approach.
During the first day participants had an opportunity to get to know each other through different non-formal education activities and they were also introduced to the topic of the project. The good weather let us had a great afternoon session on the beach where in national team’s participants had a chance to present their sending organizations and their local/international activities. In the next days, youngsters discovered different youth diplomacy and peace building process in the youth field and discussed some barriers to peace. One of their task was to list some famous peacebuilders and explain to the other participants why these people are called peacebuilders and how their actions and behaviours positively impact the world.
Participants were invited to create their own campaigns in the international youth field interacting with the people of our local community. They were challenged to give their peacebuilding speech in front of the audience during one of our afternoon session. Together on 9th of May, we also celebrated the EuropeDay. Europe Day is a day, which gives all Europeans the possibility through different events to emphasise unity and to value all what unified Europe has given to its citizens.
A lot of outdoor activities and informal games helped our youngsters get in touch with the local community. We had some afternoon session on the beach of Torremolinos where participants presented their sending organization during NGOs Fair, played some non-formal games and elaborate their photo, video campaign thanks to the activity “Photo Safari”.
In the last day, participants created their peacebuilding balloon towers and had an opportunity to learn why is important to prevent the radicalization instead to fight or have a conflict afterwards. Participants made their reflection and evaluation about the past week and the TC ended with the explanation of what is Youthpass and release of the certificates to all the group.
The project is implemented by 6 organisations and financed by the European Commission through Erasmus+ programme.
