Georgia Hosted 2nd Round of Reconciliation International Youth Project November 6
23:11, November 6, 2015 | News, Own newsIn October 18-26, 2015, Kobuleti, Georgia hosted the 2nd round of Reconciliation: Building Peace Together Through Remembrance training within the Active Citizens for Reconciliation Project. The Project is implemented by Germany-based European Intercultural Forum organization. The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor acted as the Armenian partner of the organization within the trainings above. Like the previous training held early in June 2015, this training was also attended by 24 active young people from Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan representing various organizations and united by their desire to establish and maintain peace both worldwide and particularly in their regions through involving younger generations. During the training, its participants had the opportunity to first meet each other and then get familiar with some episodes of the history of other countries, ongoing conflicts and the processes aimed at their peaceful resolution. The training provided both theoretical and practical educational activities. The participants also got familiar with considerable theoretical content. They learnt the definitions of the terms “peace” and “justice” by famous philosophers Emmanuel Kant and Aristotle and then in groups discussed the options they preferred most. The trainers introduced the “theory of change” envisaging setting the main goal and developing various conditions to attain it. Afterwards, the training participants were invited to provide examples from daily life to show the ways and steps to make changes. The practical task aimed to help them to show the transformation route of real and severe conflicts that they might have guided through their own project initiatives. Through practical discussions, the young participants also had the opportunity to take part in group discussions and provide their own examples of conflict and reconciliation by analyzing them and highlighting the most useful conflict resolution approaches. Another interesting experience for the participants of the 1st round of the training was testing their capacities. By acting as “trainers”, they introduced to the “newcomers” the topics already familiar to them about conflicts, their stages and transformations. And during the “NGO Fair”, the participants learnt about the activities and achievements of the organizations they presented. One of the core sections of the training was introducing to the participants the techniques for developing and implementing their own projects. Almost every participant looked forward to that moment since it concerned displaying their own initiatives. Of course, many participants found the project development process to be more difficult than they expected, however, by joint efforts they overcame that stage. After group discussions, the groups of young participants introduced to each other their new initiatives mostly aimed to disseminate the idea of peace and reconciliation. Some of the participants wished to share their impressions and daily experienced of the training and prepared relevant articles posted on the online platform below: https://reconciliationforpeace.wordpress.com. Apart from the educational content of the training, much effort was also invested into making the daily life of the participants interesting. To this end, the participants attended a series of events and visited various sites, monuments and other places.