Supporting Youth in Action for an Inclusive Society

Since November 2019 I have been helping curate the PeaceJam conference which is a youth leadership programme that empowers young people to create positive change in themselves, their communities and in the world through the inspiration of 14 Nobel Peace Laureates who pass on the spirit, skills and wisdom they embody.

In preparation of PeaceJam’s Pan-European online youth conference in November 2020, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams, The Rt Hon Stuart Lawrence and The International Children’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, prominent youth activists from across Europe, we mobilized young people in Europe to address the most pressing issues in their communities to advance inclusion and promote peace.

Young people are at the forefront championing change, and we wanted to amplify this through our campaign for an inclusive Europe, and support them with the right tools and resources in order to make a real difference in their communities.

Ultimately, our goal is to cultivate Laureates of the Future that, with our help, can turn their social action ideas into successful projects that advance inclusion and promote peace.

Initially this conference which was meant to take place in Belgium, but with the global Covid pandemic and the BLM revolution that have started changing institutionally embedded racial injustices on its head over the summer, I started wondering how can we make this conference more meaningful to young people? Besides organizing workshops delivered by various organisations such as Plant-for-the Planet, Tools for Self Reliance, Upstarts Projects and learn skills to develop as young leaders, that’s when I put forward the idea of creating a mini-grants scheme in the form of the Laureate of the Future Program.

Young people aged 14–26 were encouraged to apply for a micro-grant up to €200 (sponsored by Winchester Rotary Club) by submitting their idea and project plan through the ‘PeaceJam Laureate of the Future Programme’. The scheme launched on September 21 which is the International Day of Peace, encouraging young people across Europe to apply for this award. Our very first winners are two young men aged 15 from Afghanistan currently living in refugee camps in Greece, their journey and stories are incredibly inspiring.

Murtaza has been learning how to code and is making a refugee social networking site, with our support he wants to develop this project further and teach other young children the skills needed to overcome their obstacles.

Amir created CovidMedia.Com a website to provide information about covid-19 to refugees living in refugee camps in Greece who were not properly informed about how to protect themselves from covid or take care of themselves if they got sick.

I feel privileged to have been given this platform by PeaceJam to embed social action into young people’s lives, because at critical moments in time, we can raise the aspirations of young people significantly, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs society relatively little to do this, but the benefit to young people, and to the broader world, can be enormous.

‘’To say that on a daily basis you can make a difference, well, you can. One

act of kindness a day can do it’’- Betty Wiliams (1967 Nobel Laureate)