TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Grigor Yeritsyan
- To raise awareness among youth about everyday conflicts on different levels (regional, national, international) and to discuss means of their possible solutions.
- To provide the participants with a greater conceptual understanding of conflict, violence and peace, and the forces of conflict dynamics.
- To provide the participants with skills to handle conflict situations, e.g. moderating skills, negotiation skills and experience, networking, encouraging them to take over a moderating role in the solution process of ethnic, cultural and/or religious conflicts back home in their societies without being aggressive and offensive towards others.
- To promote inter-religious and intercultural dialogue among young people, addressing the role of history/tradition, culture and religion in their lives and discovering common values.
- To motivate young people to involve in existing peace initiatives and to start up new ones by employing the networking skills acquired with the training
- To stimulate young people to reflect on conflicts inside Europe and to involve them in the discussion on the future development of the European Union and the role the EU and other stakeholders can take in finding sustainable solutions to those conflicts.
During the training course, young people from conflict regions as well as students from other parts of Europe were trained in mediation and moderation of conflict solution processes. The aim was to provide the participants coming from Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine with theoretical and practical knowledge of how to achieve a non-violent solution of conflicts and to enable them to engage in an open-minded exchange with other population groups as well as with people from other parts of Europe in order to create a peaceful atmosphere characterized by tolerance and mutual understanding.
During the training course different non-formal education tools were used that guaranteed the active participation of all participants in the training course. Hence, the participants learnt from each other by sharing their knowledge, experience and competencies and by discovering themselves new quality information that they will use in the future. The team of trainers provided a framework to facilitate this sharing in order to make it as fruitful as possible.
Young people learnt about each others' conflicts and tried to understand the complexity of conflict resolution. They became more aware in order to enable other young people in their communities to take an active stand in the solution and peace-building processes of various conflicts.
Full-time Trainer.