This two year Strategic Partnership project, co-financed by Erasmus+, aims to introduce the Culture of Peace and build capacity of 5 organisations & their associate partners in Latvia, Netherlands, Poland , the United Kingdom and Greece. Together we are working on developing an innovative, non-formal education methodology, consisting of an interactive game & Guide for facilitators/educators, that can be used to develop practical peacebuilding skills inside organisations. We have called this game Peace Please.

Our approach draws inspiration from the concept “a Culture of Peace”, as promoted by the UN especially between 2005-2015, which was the Decade of a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. Currently this is continued by the Global Movement for a Culture of Peace. A Culture of Peace is an integral approach to preventing violence and violent conflicts, and an alternative to the culture of war and violence.

Our project proposes a framework to work on that on 3 levels:

1) the personal: inner peace;
2) the inter-personal: peaceful relationships
3) the global: peaceful societies.

We have also ‘translated’ the eight areas of a Culture of Peace, into areas relevant for organisations, as you can see in this illustration:

Organisations & people involved:

Foundation for Active Nonviolence (the Netherlands) – Nina Koevoets

Radi Vidi Pats (Latvia) – Stanislavs Babins
KobieTY (Poland) – Marta Skorczynska
AddART (Greece) – Giannis Kanlis (+ later Michalis Karamichalis)
Catalyst for Growth – (UK) Kasia Stepien (+ later Tristan Teteroo)

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE GAME AND THE GUIDE ON THIS WEBSITE.

PROJECT TIMELINE

January 2021: Kick off meeting (online)

May 2021: First Training Course, aiming at introducing the concept of Culture of Peace and creating a shared understanding of how Culture of Peace translated into the context of NGOs and organisations.

May 2021 – August 2021: Creating the contextual framework for the game, in Greece

August 2021: Second Training Course, aiming at designing a first draft of the game, in Latvia.

August 2021 – March 2022: Game testing and gathering feedback

March 2022: Local play testing events. In March/April 2022 we organised local play testing events in each country.

May 2022: Peace Culture Training Course and Playtesting, in Poland

20 people from 5 countries with different backgrounds gathered from the 3rd till the 9th of May in Poland, at the beautiful natural farm of Zywa Ziemia to participate in workshops and develop the game. During this time we brought up the aspects and mechanisms to create games, and gathered ideas to complete the Guide accompanying the game. During the workshops participants experienced not only the beauty of gamification and board+card games but also reflected upon nonviolent communication and how the Culture of Peace works in our organisations and how it could be implemented into working environments.

September+October 2022: Local Multiplier Events in each country

There was also an international ‘multiplier’ event – I contributed the talk below to a summit of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures for peace, held at university of Pedagogy and Technology in Colombia, October 3-5 2022.

November-December 2022: Finalising the game and Guide and evaluating the project.

Download the flyer below: