Story Telling and Advocacy for Peace
Training for Youth Workers Netherlands September 13-18

Across Europe and beyond, young people are growing up in a world increasingly shaped by war narratives, ecological breakdown, shrinking democratic space, and social fragmentation. Particularly accelerated by the US president, who claims to work on peace, but instead fuels violence abroad and in his own country. While many young people feel deeply concerned, they often experience powerlessness, cynicism, or emotional overload, rather than a sense of agency. News are dominated by fear, hostility, and a growing sense of inevitability of violence and collapse. Questioning such narratives is the first step to change reality. Therefore, we want to raise questions such as: what does peace mean beyond ‘the absence of war or fighting’? What does justice mean? Could ‘human nature’ be nonviolent? How can we solve conflicts nonviolently? And engage in a process of finding practical answers to these questions together.

Storytelling has always played a central role in how societies make sense of conflict, justify violence, or imagine alternatives. Stories shape identities, values, and possibilities. They can normalize war or open up space for peace. Storytelling is a powerful advocacy tool for youth workers and youth: it can inspire empathy, humanize abstract issues and amplify marginalized voices. It also provides tools to feel more empowered to make a difference, hence the title of this project.

This Training of Youth Workers within the Erasmus+ framework responds to the urgent need to help youth workers to let youth take responsibility and encourage and empower them to contribute to peace-building in their society, rather than staying helpless, cynical or disassociate. The training equips youth workers with the skills to design and facilitate impactful stories that inspire young people to actively contribute to peace, so it becomes a practice, a choice, and a collective responsibility. Something that is active, courageous, and urgent in these times of crises. The creative methods will enable youth workers to actively engage young people in finding their voice, discovering their agency, and contribute to society.

The aim of the training is to empower youth workers with storytelling and advocacy skills that enable them to inspire, mobilize, and support young people to engage in peace-building and social change in times of increasing militarisation, social fragmentation, shrinking democratic space and climate chaos.
The objectives are that by the end of the training, participating youth workers will:

• Be able to counter narratives contributing to division, fear, and a sense of powerlessness with stories, inspired by real-life
  examples, that encourage understanding and compassion and give a sense of agency and hope.
• Learn the basic elements of designing an impactful story that promotes social change and develop skills to craft peace
  oriented narratives that resonate with young people.
• Gain practical methods to facilitate storytelling processes with young people that show peace-building processes, across
  different cultures and national contexts.
• Improve their ability to use story-telling as an advocacy tool for peace, justice, and nonviolence.
• Exchange best practices in story-telling and advocacy and strengthen each other’s youth work by sharing and exploring
  future cooperation.

You can read more in the Info-pack below.