In this chapter you will find the key elements and take-aways from this course providing you with four practical peacebuilding tools. You can use these tools at a youth centre or anywhere where you might encounter young people, although some of the tools require peaceful surroundings, such as a quiet room. Some of the tools are momentary, and some of them you can build in the long term. You might already be aware of and using these exact tools. This course wishes to acknowledge and reinforce good practices that already exist that build peace in youth work.
The tools are:
- Self-regulating the nervous system and grounding your own body
- Guidelines for holding space and listening with intention
- Creating safer spaces for the youth
- Supporting action and agency
1. Self-regulating your nervous system and grounding your own body to help others feel safe around you
Why?
- Adults can act as anchors for embodied safety: if your body sends a message of safety from within, everyone else around you can more easily feel safe around you as well.
- Debriefing: when you’ve dealt with a difficult situation at work, you can rely on yourself that you know how to connect with yourself and your body to bring your nervous system back to safety.
- You can practise the skill of embodying safety: the more you practise it, the easier it will be for you to access these tools when you are in a difficult spot.
How?
- Hum breathing: Sit straight or lay down on a mat or a firm surface. Inhale through your nose and exhale with a gentle humming sound. Continue as many rounds as needed (but at least four). (See the whole exercise in chapter 3b.)
- Lay down on a mat or a firm surface with your hands and legs relaxed and apart. Close your eyes. Without any need to change anything, sense all the parts of your body that are touching the floor. Imagine that you are lying on soft sand. Picture the shape that your body is naturally pressing to the sand. Now let your body relax with each exhalation. Each exhalation will allow your body to press a little bit wider and deeper shape into the sand.
- A quiet room free from devices in the youth centre for relaxation and rest. Set up the atmosphere with dimmed lights, soft background music, and pillows, mats, and blankets. The quiet room can be utilised by both staff and youth.
2. Guidelines for holding space and listening with intention
Why?
- The number one goal for creating safety is to provide experiences of being fully heard and seen
- Listening with intention is the most powerful tool to hear and see a person as they are
How?
- Listening with interest
- Creating a peaceful atmosphere without a sense of hurry
- Being present: concentrating only on listening
- Attitude of warm acceptance: restraining from judging, aiming to understand
- Asking questions (only) to support the speaker to tell their story
- Giving full attention to the speaker: restraining from sharing your own experiences
3. Creating safer spaces for the youth
Why?
- To ensure every young person feels welcome as they are
- To set an example of safe and inclusive spaces
- To increase agency and encourage creating and demanding safer spaces in other surroundings as well by making power relations visible and by setting common rules for everyone to feel safe in
How?
- A safer space is a process (not a separate action) and a methodology of caring for the youth that you wish to create and maintain safety for and with
- While safety is the adults’ responsibility, the most effective and long-lasting way to create safer spaces is to engage the youth to build these spaces together
- Creating and maintaining safer spaces requires constant reflection and evaluation of how safe the space feels to young people and staff
- A safer space includes considering at least communication, physical space, and time management of the space
- Guidelines for safer spaces must be done together with everyone who is regularly coming to the youth work setting and should include:
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- guidelines for behaviours that are acceptable and not acceptable in a space;
- guidelines on how to maintain the safer space;
- action plans for what one will do if the safer space is broken;
- guidelines on how to re-establish the safer space.
4. Supporting action and agency
What kind of action could you take? Make a project together? – because agency provides hope
Why?
- Without action it is difficult to maintain hope and agency
How?
- Activities that build agency must grow from inputs coming from young people themselves. Adults can serve as facilitators and help in finding resources such as funding and premises for activities. A good source for funding youth initiatives is for example the Erasmus+ programme.
- With support from Erasmus+ Solidarity projects a group of young people can make a positive change in the local community. The project can last from 2 to 12 months part time and can get a monthly allowance to cover the direct costs of managing and implementing the project. The youth worker can act as a coach if needed and these costs can be covered by the project funding as well, if needed.
- Real engagement in joint projects and true inclusion in the community are ideals that can be hard to attain but are worth striving for. If you manage to plan and carry out a project, even a small one that starts from the interests of young people and they are truly part of the process of making it come true, that will very likely help participants feel that they can make a difference and that their actions and opinions matter.
The fundamental values of youth work, peace education and the European Union are very similar. They are principles of unity and diversity, solidarity, equality of opportunity and meaningful participation. Youth workers play an important role in fostering the meaningful participation of young people, in particular building their civic competences and commitment to the aforementioned common values like equality and human rights, as well as peace in general. In addition, youth work can have an important role in countering extremism, preventing and tackling destructive conflicts and reducing tension in society.
The role of youth workers is even more significant right now, when we live in times of war. In the vicinity of our societies, tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands, as in Poland) of people from Ukraine have fled the horrors of war to our countries. Youth workers have the potential to play a crucial role in welcoming young people escaping war to our societies, and building trust and relationships among young people from the receiving country. Youth workers have the competence to bring young people together and enhance the culture of peace and create a more sustainable future among youth in our societies.
