The URI Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Regional Coordinator and the founder of Desert Bloom Cooperation Circle (a URI member group) participated in “Volunteers as Agents for Peace.” This training course was held in Vienna, Austria from 24-30 May 2019. The training was attended by 50 participants from Europe, MENA and Asia.
The training was aimed at fostering the role of peacebuilding organizations, youth workers and voluntary organizations in promoting and building to peace as well as combating against hate speeches. Also, the training tackled different approaches in preparing, mentoring and evaluating voluntary projects in order to support volunteers to act as peace agents.
The participants shared many innovative ideas about the role of volunteers in promoting peace. Many peacebuilding tools were introduced. Also, strategies to act as peace messengers and to reduce stereotypes were tackled. We had many fruitful debates about peace work among young people from all over the world, particularly from Europe and Mediterranean countries.
The program included conducting three small projects for the local community in Vienna. This enabled participants to have good chances to interact with the local community and practice their role as agents for peace. One of the projects was to do “street action” where 14 participants did some street performances in public spaces. The group succeeded in attracting an audience and delivering peaceful messages about Peace, Diversity, Minority Rights and Disability Inclusion.
This training course was co-financed with the friendly support of the Erasmus+ program of the European Union.
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