Building peace means contemplating a peaceful future, thinking about better ways for the peoples of a community to live together, initiating processes to address the sources of conflict, analysing past grievances and implementing actions for more stability and justice. Can we build the future without youth? This brochure addresses the role of African youth in peace work, the hurdles and sources of potential. Young people very often find themselves in the centre of conflicts, either as desperate perpetrators of violence, as the pawns of power-hungry manipulators, or as members of an armed group as a means to make a living.

That information is from the introduction to Building Peace: Youth at the Heart of Peace Work, a publication by Bread for the World – Protestant Development Service. If you work with youth anywhere in the world, this will be a very helpful resource. It is available on their website at http://peaceworkafrica.net/Youth-at-the-Heart-of-Peace-Work or you can doownload it directly from here: http://peaceworkafrica.net/IMG/pdf/EED_Heft_10_engl_WEB_low.pdf

The third annual NARPI Summer Training once again brought together participants from across Northeast Asia to share and learn during two weeks of peacebuilding training and field trips. Participants, facilitators, staff and volunteers built understanding and friendship in and out of the classroom. Thirty-three participants from mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan joined NARPI for two weeks of training from August 5 to 16 at the DMZ Peace-Life Valley in Inje, South Korea, which is, perhaps ironically, in one of the most heavily militarized areas of the world. The training offered the following courses: Conflict and Peace Framework; Theory and Practice of Peace Education; and Trauma Awareness and Healing in the first week; and Restorative Justice: Aiming for Healing and Reconciliation; Gender, Peace and Everyday Life Security; and Nonviolent Communication and Facilitation in the second week. Aside from the courses held, there were cultural nights, musuem tours, visits to the DMZ, and even rafting down a river and catching of fish by hand. 

For more information on the NARPI 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Training, read their 2013 Fall Newsletter pdf here (1.96 MB) . 

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