Young People for Peace

Peace Skills Workshops for Schools

The Young People for Peace (YPfP) project aimed to decrease hostilities between culturally diverse young people in Brisbane. It was funded by Brisbane City Council (BCC) and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s (DIAC) Diverse Australia Program. One of the main activities of the project was the development and trial of a peace building training resource for schools, youth groups and other organisations.

After consultations with young people in a number of schools in Brisbane and Logan it was determined that it was vital to deliver it through culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) youth mentors. Because the formal curricula of schools often leave little time for extracurricular activities, such as this peace skills training, it was important to use the time available for training well.

The youth mentors were quickly able to build relationships and trust with the students. One of the challenges was that the youth mentors had little formal training in peace skills or conflict resolution practices. The approach we took was to identify suitable youth mentors, conduct a train-the-trainer workshop with them, and then to co- facilitate the program together with the youth mentors in two schools in the project area.

Available here is a copy of the facilitators manual for this project for anyone to use and run a similar project