Completed Projects

The project aims to facilitate the cultivation and maintenance of non-violent conflict resolution mechanisms in the Balkan region by supporting a group critical ambassadors for peace in leading this development. The project has its basis in the fact that many of these countries for many years have had repeated violent conflicts that have dozens of lasting repercussions on the countries and communities’ development and well-being. Young people are particularly great sacrifices in these conflicts and therefore also the right audience to lead the change. The project will take the form of various courses, exchanges, and non-formal learning as well as lobbying and advocacy. The project will be specifically implemented in Ukraine and Georgia. The overall objective of this project is: to make a contribution to a bottom-up, people-to-people approach to peace-building by strengthening the role of young people as peace ambassadors capable of acting as a bridge to peaceful conflict resolution among the post-soviet societies, particularly in Ukraine and Georgia civil societies. Learn more about this project

BOEMI Building Our Employment skills through Music Investigations and new media is an innovative capacity building project involving 5 involving 5 partners – Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo “Danilo Dolci” (CSC)(Italy), Crossing Borders (Denmark), IYEC (Ghana), Jeunesse En Action “GNO FAR” (Senegal), Asociación para la Integración y Progreso de las Culturas Pandora (Spain) – from 2 different continents (Europe and Africa) that envisages to use non formal education, Reciprocal Maieutic Approach and music as a tool for youth development, and more specifically to raise employability skills of over 270 youngsters. The project aims at promoting transnational non-formal learning mobility activities between the different countries, targeting both young people with fewer opportunities and youth workers, so as to increase their competences and active participation in society. BOEMI aims particularly at growing youngsters’ self-esteem and feeling of belonging to society, increasing the confidence in their “unique selling points” and transforming their interest in music into employability skills. The project also intends to empower youth work organisations, developing new working methods, tools and materials based on non-formal education and experimenting music as an educational pedagogical tool. Learn more about this project

Most of the young people in Lusaka’s exposed areas – so to say slums (Compounds) do not share in the country’s political agenda, let alone being able to participate meaningfully in the country’s electoral processes. This has over the years created frustration and contempt for the relevance of electoral processes among the young, causing many to either retire from such processes or engage in a destructive manner. With the economic difficulties facing the country, this frustration is escalated and it is feared that it could lead to violence during elections, especially of young people in slum areas whose economic conditions are most pressured. This project is an attempt to alleviate such catastrophic events. We want to contribute to a peaceful 2016 tripartite election through a broad invitation of young people to peacefully participate in the elections and for politicians to recognize and bring youth issues on the political agenda. Learn more about this project

In our everyday interventions, we see escalating polarities between Nordic local societies and refugees/immigrants. Hate speech, xenophobia, and discrimination against the new comers are becoming more publicly manifested, in fact, these are also giving space for right wing and nationalistic politics, and extremely protective policies to be favored. But through experience, we also know that a back-lash of this nature is not necessarily out of hatred, but possibly out of misconception. Due to the speed and magnitude of migrant and refugee relocations within societies, there has not been sufficient space for concrete cultural learning and exchange, nor space enough for the locals and the new comers to interact and build a joint understanding of their new context – and thus compassion for each other. These processes have not been localized enough, they have been held at policy/political decision making level, where policies made have only fueled the divisions, rather than encourage inclusion.This project is thus an honest contribution to fostering migrant and refugees’ inclusion in Nordic societies through providing skills, and a platform for newcomers to interface with the wider society and tell their life stories. In our countries and cities, we see the common social challenges of creating a ‘new us’; this expresses itself for example where members of different social groups don’t easily interact enough – leading to stereotyping, mistrust and negative perceptions of Us and Them. This needs to be further addressed.We aim to create safe spaces for people of different backgrounds to interact, and therefore foster cultural learning and bridge cultural differences, as a contribution to more effective refugee/migrant inclusion into the Nordic local societies. Sharing food and stories are basic human ways of building trust and community, we have seen it work many times before, and we believe it is a needed strategy in the context we find ourselves in now. Learn more about the project

iVOTE Zimbabwe- Facilitating the active and positive participation of youth in electoral processes in Zimbabwe. As political protests in Zimbabwe have turned violent and even fatal, reportedly leaving at least 12 people dead, there is a need to call for peaceful resolutions to the crisis. Many ordinary Zimbabweans expressed that hoped-for changes are yet to be felt, in access to employment, cash and broad stakeholder consultations. Our quasi-currency, operating with multiple exchange rates, is fueling a national crisis. The youth part of the iVOTE project initiated a peace “digital conversation” to end violence and calling for peace during the Shutdown which was caused by the spike in fuel prices causing violent protests from members of groups who oppose the current government. Learn more about the project

This project seeks to mobilize and enable young people from Senior High Schools in Sierra Leone to debate and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda in their schools and communities. Under our project in Sierra Leone, we have designed the MUN to work along with the topics of the Sustainable Development Goals. We are working with 17 schools, where they will learn closely about the 17 SDGs. In each school, we are hosting in-schools debates and discussions about SDGs based on the MUN model. It means that within each school, the participating students will form groups that represent the different SDGs and then follow the MUN model to debate and discuss them – both learning more about the SDGs and at the same time gaining skills and methods in other areas around the SDGs. In addition, each of the 17 schools is allocated an SDG they debate about/defending whenever there are inter-schools’ debates. These interschools debates will also follow the MUN model where then the participants will both gain the advantages of the model but also gain in-depth researched knowledge and engagements about each SDG as presented by the different schools Learn more about the project

Our project “Localizing the Promise” – getting the National Youth Manifestoonto the local government planning agenda in Uganda, is a follow-up to an earlier CISU funded CSP project “Keeping the Promise: Peaceful Youth participation and Youth Policy Agenda Promotion in the Uganda2016 National General Elections and beyond”. Learn more about the project

“Vet opportunities for migrants and refugees” (acronym “VET4MIGRE” is a project approved under the Erasmus Plus program KA2 Strategic Partnerships for VET Development of innovation (Action No. 2017-1-DK01-KA202-034224). The project starts from the result of a research conducted by the European Commission in 2015 (according to which more than 1.8 million immigrants of non-European origin reside in Europe and risk to be marginalized) and from the observation of the situation of difficulties that migrants and refugees encounter in destination countries. It is, therefore, more important than ever to develop new, creative, and far-sighted strategies and practical ways, so that the refugee and migrant population adapts, integrates, and becomes a positive member in the host country: one of the safest ways seems to be to integrate them into the labor market by offering training and mentoring opportunities necessary to become self-employed, as migrants and refugees can indeed become an important workforce for the host countries. So the project, in line with the above, wants to try to include migrants in the European economy by favoring: strengthening skills in ICT and innovations; improvement of soft skills, abilities and competences, promotion and exchange of good practices development of situations that facilitates better integration Check the project website