Peace Education for Inclusive Classrooms- Supported Project by the European Youth Foundation

We are very proud to announce that EKVALIS has been granted funds to implement the project “Peace Education for Inclusive Classrooms“ supported by the European Youth Foundation and the Council of Europe. This project will be a cooperation with the local high school in Dracevo- Skopje “Braka Miladinovci“. Our partners in project are the Theater of Shadows and Clouds. The project “Peace Education for Inclusive Classrooms“ targets young Macedonian and Albanian students from the rural areas in Skopje-Macedonia and enables them to share a joined collaborative future together instead of being victimized by the divided past. With recognizing and introducing peace education as a powerful platform of inclusion inside a local multiethnic school in Skopje, the young students, teachers and youth workers will engage into a complex program of activities for empowering dialogue of understanding, encouraging peer empathy and decreasing frustration and aggression from ethnic origin. Through combination of topics for non-violent communication, conflict resolution, gendered and sexualised societies, initiating dialogue through theater, participating in study visits to relevant institutions and organisations that work in this field, the young people will experience the benefits of peace education as a first-hand experience. Moreover, this project includes teachers as relevant actors in the process of creating ethnically inclusive school environment and the teachers from the local school will participate in creating teaching work plans on peace education. The experiences from both the work with the students and the teachers will be published in a Manual for peace education that will give the opportunity to other teachers and youth workers to work with this platform. In its follow-up phase, the project will address the effectiveness of peace education to relevant institutional actors in the country such as the Bureau of Educational Development and the Municipality of City of Skopje. Through institutional lobbying with best practices from this pilot project, peace education in conflict environments will be considered for future implementation by the state institutions. The project “Peace Education for Inclusive Classrooms“ is focused on the third youth sector priority on “Inclusive and Peaceful Societies“ set by the European Youth Foundation and Council of Europe. As an organisation that works on educational development we strive to bring inclusion into schools where many conflicts occur and to maintaining peace through education. Stay tuned for the various project activities starting in October!