From 18 - 23 July 2023, #TheMissingPeace consortium hosted a training course in Weimar Germany, bringing together passionate and inspiring peacebuilders from across Europe who share the common purpose of building relationships, bridging divides and making the world a more peaceful place.

Over 30 participants, including youth workers, peacebuilders, non-formal educators and 5 members of Glencree’s All-Island Women’s Peacebuilding Network, connected, shared learning and explored different approaches to promote youth engagement in peacebuilding in the 6-day course.

At the outset of the course, trainers led a series of peer-to-peer, experiential and academic inputs to explore cross-pollinating the peacebuilding and youth work sectors. Five youth NGOs and grassroots initiatives joined the event to share learnings from their community-building work. Using roleplay simulations and with input from conflict management academics, non-formal learning approaches and concepts in conflict management and relationship building were also put under the spotlight.

This set the foundations for course participants, who brought together a diverse range of expertise, to work together to design, develop and pilot-workshop a ‘Toolkit’ for youth workers and organisations to use in their local conflict contexts and communities. Key themes explored in this collaborative work included: migration and refugee rights, gender-based violence, practices of sustainable peace and engaging youth in peacebuilding.