Skopje

Training course
"Conflict Management in multiethnic and multicultural Regions"
14.12.2005 to 18.12.2005
Skopje (Macedonia)
Application deadline: 28.11.2005 (non-visa), 23.11.2005 (visa)
25 participants
Participation fee 40 € (EU-15), 30 € (other countries)

The training course "Conflict Management in multiethnic and multicultural Regions" educates young Europeans in mediating conflicts that are part of every day's life in regions where people with different ethnic, cultural and/or religious backgrounds are living. The training will teach 30 young people especially from European conflict regions in tools for conflict resolution and peace building methods. After the training course participants shall be able to take over the moderating role in the future international youth projects dealing with conflict resolution.

We are aiming at involving participants from all over Europe. Especially participants from conflict regions such as the Western Balkans or the Caucasus are facing less-privileged backgrounds. Therefore, we decided to implement this training in Skopje, as it improves the possibilities of people from South Eastern Europe to participate in the training.

Reasons for the training course, target group and beneficiaries

In many regions in Europe, different ethnic, religious and cultural groups are living together, sometimes with notable conflicts in every day's life. The collapse of the communist regime in Eastern Europe brought these conflicts to light, which were officially suppressed before by the regimes. The formation of new democratic countries and the therewith connected drawing of new borderlines made these conflicts become problems of several countries in Europe, e.g. the Balkan countries with an often mixed population, Latvia and Estonia with big Russian minorities. Also very old situations can be grouped there like the presence of Roma minorities in Romania, Hungary and other Central and Eastern European countries. Due to the changed situation of a globalised world without the former bi-polar powers, today's conflicts take more and more place within nation-states than amongst global actors. Therefore, peace making within communities has become an important task in building a peaceful culture in Europe.

It is especially the young generation that has the strong desire and the will to start a change towards a peaceful society. They are able to start a dialogue between young people from different parties of a conflict. In contrast to older generations, they have not experienced (that much) disappointments, injuries or injustice and are therefore more open to work on an improvement of the current situations. Because of this reasons, it is crucial to equip young people with necessary skills to contribute to a culture of peace.

This where we want to support with our training course. Young people from these regions will be trained in mediation and moderation of conflict solution processes on a very concrete and base-lined level in schools and other local communities where young people come together. Aim is to help the people that live in conflict regions to overcome their prejudices and enable them to get into an open-minded discussion with the other population groups in order to create a peaceful atmosphere with tolerance and mutual cultural understanding. The approach behind the training course is to act mainly on young people between school age and 25 years as they are considered to be more open-minded and willing to put in question traditional prejudices.

The innovative element of the training course consist of the combination of three interdependent factors: the regional constitution of group, the training methods, and the personalities of the participants.

The training gathers together a group consisting of participants, team members and trainers from many different conflict regions. This fact will enable all participating persons to learn about new, different and innovative views, approaches and methods in conflict solution processes.

The training course itself consists of an innovative combination of lectures, discussion, case work on practical examples and an excursion to Tetovo where the situation in a real-case conflict solution process will be studied. As this training aims to enable the participants to take over a mediation role in conflicts, especially in their home countries, the working methods will be highly experimental containing a lot of simulations and different kinds of practical assignments.

The target group of the training course is well defined: it is directed to young people who shall be enabled to take over mediation role in conflicts between groups of young people. By directing towards young people which are the future of their communities, the training can contribute to the peace building processes in different, nowadays conflictuous areas in Europe.

After the training course the participants will have a profound level of knowledge about discrimination, xenophobia and related issues and how they influence conflicts. The young people will possess skills and knowledge needed for running autonomous conflict solution projects on their local level.

Target group of the training course are young people, students and youth workers from regions with conflicts due to multiethnic, multicultural or multi-religious populations that are willing to contribute to conflict solution processes on their local and regional level and to be future peace-builders in Europe. In total, 10 countries will be represented.

The selected participants of the training course will be mainly members of Youth NGOs that are active or want to become active in the field of conflict solution. Those participants dispose of a big multiplying potential. In their local and regional activities, they are working with young people who suffer conflict situations in their daily life. This way, as many young people from conflict regions as possible can benefit from the knowledge and methods provided by the training course.

Ideally, further projects should evolve after the training, so that the participants of these projects will also gain from the trained tools and skills during the training course. This new projects also dispose a large multiplying effect and should sensitise more people to get active in the fields of fight against racism, conflict resolution and peace building.

How to apply:

The participants will be selected by their motivation letter. This letter consists of two parts:

In the first part, you should describe the situation in your region, explaining the conflicts that are part of daily life. This will guarantee that the focus of the training course will be well defined, providing the necessary and relevant knowledge to the participants and tailor a program to all applicants needs.

The second part of the motivation letter asks for your experiences on the field, your motivation to participate and how you will use the knowledge provided by the training course to contribute to the solution of conflicts in your region.

Please use the remark-field of the application form and give answers to these two questions. The motivation letter will be 80% decisive for the selection of the participants!!

The participantion fee contains all costs for food, accomodation and the course program. Travel costs will partly be reimbursed (only if tickets or receipts can be provided).

Click here to start the application.

We are looking forward to your application!!