War and peace

 

The traits of creativity, openness to new experiences, and desire for change, combined with the energy and vitality that we associate with youth, are all elements of the distinctive capabilities of youth to build peace.
This is the reason, why we decided to gather young people from 8 different countries to exchange the experiences about the democracy, peace building and about war in their countries in past or in present times. Especially in connection to the rise of populist extremism and radicalization in Europe, we would like to debate with youngster from different countries about this phenomenon that challenges our European values and democracy. The main message we want to spread is the crucial role of peace and peaceful alternatives for the problem solving, leading young people to the values such as tolerance and respect. In this sense, we have set these specific objectives:
- First, to provide an opportunity for young people with different backgrounds to share their views and insights on the issue of extremism, war, democracy and peace, not only in abstract terms, but also in practice through different activities in a highly multicultural environment.
- Second, to make participants realize that they can be a catalyst force for the change in the world and active players in the process of peace making.
- Third, to learn to solve conflicts, looking for proper alternatives.
- Fourth, to learn to accept and be ok with diversity.
- Fifth, to provide young people an opportunity to discover different forms of youth participation and involvement.

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The present days show that the topic of exchange is more and more actual. With the situation in Europe and other continents, with terrorist’s attacks and atmosphere of fear in big cities, some experts says that we’re already in 3rd World War - war of fear. Even in Slovakia the extremist’s power is on rise and thousands of young people tend to believe that extremist’s political parties are good. During the exchange we want to learn together with young people coming from different geographic and social backgrounds what it means to be in war, what it means to live in fear and on the other side - what we need to do to keep peace and tolerant society.