Themes Children and young people are taught values and practices of tolerance, conflict resolution, citizenship (in Lebanese Schools only) and gender equity, applied to the cultural environment of the Lebanese and Palestinian youth, reflecting the realities that the beneficiaries are facing in their daily life.
The sessions’ main themes are divided as follows:
I. Personal development:
- Distress, Violence & Abuse
- Self-knowledge and self-esteem
- The ability to express one’s opinion in an objective way
- The knowledge of one’s own responsibility vis-à-vis oneself as well as vis-à-vis the others.
- Individual autonomy and proactive attitude.
- Setting short term and long term objectives.
Children and Young People are trained on their rights as well as their responsibilities. The aim here is to make them understand that the expression of rights should be mainly targeted to the benefit of the society as a whole and not to the detriment of others. Through the acquisition of skills and by forming connections with others, young people are highly likely to achieve change and face many challenges in the future.
II. Social integration:
- Positive Communication: Concept of Weapon use in conflict, listening and understanding the others, dialogue, mediation, conflict resolution, etc.
- The ability to accept others with their differences (Self and Other-Issues of Hatred).
- The respect of the rights of other people.
- The respect of private and public properties.
- Skills for conflict mitigation (Critical role of Media in Conflict, promoting non-violent methods in resolving conflicts between children, between children and parents and between children and teachers.)
The aim here is to train children and young people on how to be self-confident, as well as socially and morally responsible towards authority representatives and towards each other, inside and outside the classroom/ home/ community. They will also learn how to become involved in life and concerned about their neighborhood and society, including learning through social involvement and community service.
III. Civic participation:
- Raising awareness about the International Convention on the Rights of the Child and on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- Democracy and effective participation.
- Volunteering.
Children will learn about the institutions, the issues, the problems and the practices of democracy and how to make themselves effective in public life, locally, regionally and nationally, through skills, values and knowledge.
Children will be empowered through training sessions, discussions and focus groups enabling them to explore issues, make judgments, act in the interest of their peers and theirs community and propose strategies to deal with conflict and achieve justifiable goals.
A team of psychologists will provide children/youth with a collective distress and psychological follow up, one time per week for each group. These sessions are organized in order to alleviate the tenses or to resolve any psychological issues that the children/youth will face/are facing.
When children and youth have successfully attended the trainings and the learning sessions, Peace Building clubs will be organized. Those clubs should undertake peace building, dialogue and citizenship (where applicable) initiatives within their local communities. They also should be communicating trough letters, mails, etc. in order to encourage them to interact and exchange. Our role is to support them in reaching their goals. Finally, each of the clubs of Tripoli and Akkar areas will gather to implement an even greater initiative for their region.
Each year, a “success stories” DVD’ will be produced. This media tool will help to advance tolerance, dialogue, education, citizenship and gender values in innovative ways; as well as to promote diversity, and develop community life. This fact will obviously increase the number of direct and indirect beneficiaries.
Project Implementation include timeline
This project will be mainly implemented through the following plan:
I. Assessment:
The assessment aims to investigate and assess the patterns of violence, tension and conflict resolution being modeled and acted upon by children and youth, specifically in neighboring villages of opposing affiliations. This assessment is to be conducted by the implementing partner that will be jointly selected with the ministry of Education.
The methodology of prevention to avoid reviving any conflict, will take place as follows:
A- Meetings with Stakeholders:
a. Municipality of Tripoli: as the key persons and main players within the local community, and will indirectly introduce the political pressure, main partners of development process.
b. Youth Political Parties: Are main players that might relieve the conflict through their way of approaching the local society in both villages.
c. Influential Figures: Community members are people who are well known within the local society and have direct influence on the local community, and most of them are political activists.
d. School principals/ teachers: who not only influence their own schools, and parental committees, but can also influence their local community, and could become real players in enhancing changes.
e. Youth groups: especially those of the secondary level, who are always subjects of the influences of political parties, who rely on them to facilitate, promote and participate in political activities.
f. Parents: role models for children and youth, first and daily influence.
g. Active communal groups: local NGOs and Communal Clubs that are in direct contact with communal stakeholders and well known by the local community.
B- Content of the meeting:
Meetings conducted with the different stakeholders, will target the following needed assessment factors to insure the following outcomes:
a. Mapping of conflict – triggers, patterns, etc.
b. Exploration of needs
c. Suggestion of activities
d. Highlighting constraints
e. Recording feedback
C- Field Research
a. A set of in depth interviews with people from both sides to validate the findings of meetings.
II. Conflict Prevention and Peace Building in Lebanese Public and UNRWA Schools activities:
- Training of teachers and of trainers based on conflict resolution in a multi-religious and tensed political environment and on citizenship values for children and youth.
- Supporting young people in training their peers on dialogue and Conflict resolution, including using methods such as: role play, Games on Human Rights, Games on Conflict Resolution, Dialogue and Communication, Self-expression, working together on small initiatives, etc.
- Establishing Conflict resolution and Citizenship clubs and coaching members to implement small projects of common interest in connection with the municipalities, as well as inter- and intra-communal.
- Meeting and exchanging between Lebanese-Lebanese and Lebanese-Palestinian children and young people from different ethnic, religious, socio-economic and political background on conflict resolution, Human and Children’s rights and citizenship.
- Organizing specific sessions and activities targeting collectively Lebanese and Palestinian parents separately and together with their children.
Beneficiaries: The direct beneficiaries of this project are 1,800 adolescents (600 girls) aged 13 to 18 in the North of Lebanon essentially in Lebanese Public schools (900 adolescents) and UNRWA Schools (900 adolescents) from the area of Tripoli and Akkar.
Children must be divided into two harmonious groups taking into account their age (13-15yrs and 16-18yrs).
Training sessions must be delivered within the school curricula to reach the number of 1,800 adolescents for 2 years from both regions.
III. Conflict Prevention and Peace Building Youth Camps:
Three Youth Camps will be held yearly (1 in Easter Holidays, 2 in the summer), hosting both a total of 900 Lebanese and Palestinian youth divided into 2 groups based on age, including activities such as:
- Child to Child Program
- Games on Human Rights
- Games on Conflict Resolution
· Psychosocial Intervention in parallel with the activities
· Communication skills: The goal of this communication is to know each other through nicknames and to avoid prejudgment
· Discussion groups: After enhancing the capacity of both groups, each group will attend separate discussion sessions, where participants from same the group will share their experiences and their visions
· Self expression: Participants will freely express themselves using any artistic medium/ form/ line and at the end of the project, evaluation will reveal the changing vision of the participants.
· Common activities: Each group will visit the other’s village (meet and work with local communities, clubs) after which, they will prepare a type of report about what they discovered about the village that changed their preconception and their vision about the village they visited.
A youth conflict resolution team will be trained during this camp and this team will be in charge of resolving/mitigate preliminary conflicts among their peers within their communities and find alternative peaceful ways.
Beneficiaries: The direct beneficiaries of this project are 900 adolescents (225 girls) aged 18 to 21 from the area of Tripoli and Akkar.
Management and Coordination
A Project Management Committee (PMC) will be established and tasked with overseeing the project implementation, resolving any issues or obstacles related to the implementation of the project and providing overall guidance to the Ministry of Education and implementing partners. The PMC will be responsible primarily for a) follow up on the project implementation b), following up on the direct cash transferred to the Ministry of Education and how it is being channeled to the partner implementing the activities in schools in order to make sure advances are liquidated within the required time line, c) review and approval of all the changes related to the project. Any substantial change to the programme and workplan (in terms of activities, re-distribution of funds, and or responsible party) must be approved by the PMC. The committee will meet at a minimum once every month, or as necessary and will consist of the UNICEF, Ministry of Education, UNESCO, LPDC (if they wish) and UNDP (if they wish) as well as the governmental field officer located in the North.
The Ministry of Education will select a governmental staff from the Ministry located in the North of Lebanon to be assigned the task of field coordinator and follow up on the implementation of the project as per the agreed upon concept note.
The implementing partner’s contract issuance will be entrusted to the Ministry of Education and UNICEF will issue Direct Cash Transfer to the Ministry of Education on a quarterly basis to cover the implementation of the project. This transfer is to be liquidated by the Ministry of Education every 3 Months in order for UNICEF to issue the second advance.
Monitoring & Evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation of the project will be insured through following the implementation indicators and both desired and basic outcomes:
1. Desired project outcomes:
- Decrease in the number of conflicts in the schools or surrounding communities.
- Sustainable dialogue between adolescents
- Peaceful Management of inter-personal conflict
2. Preliminary indicators:
- Number of cases of conflicts in the schools or surrounding communities.
- Number of adolescents attending regularly the common activities
- Change of perception expressed by the adolescents
- Number of cases of arguments resolved by adolescents before turning into conflicts (Peaceful ability)
3. Basic Outputs:
Based on activities and programs to be implemented all along this project, experts, trainers and local community will develop:
Ø Desk review about previous experiences on Conflict Prevention previously carried out by UN agencies and/or NGOs, assessing the impact, the major success and the lessons learned of each initiatives as well as recommendations on ways to improve the implementation of such projects.
Ø A Chapter proposed to the Ministry of Education for possible inclusion in the National Citizenship Curriculumto be introduced to schools that will include the following:
- Guide on Topics and CRC and Human rights instruments
- Youth empowerment Guide in schools and surrounding communities
- Crisis Prevention, including Peace Culture and Dialogue
- Documenting the whole project
Ø A documentary film: During the whole period of the implementation, a filming team will be shooting from the first day until the last day of the whole activities. The film will be edited in a way that shows the vision of each participant, two objectives, 1st to tackle and address the issue, and 2nd to study or measure the impact of the project on the individuals based on the development and transform of the vision about the crisis.
Ø Teams of animators and trainers, mainly young peer animators and trainers, skilled in working with methods that promote non-violent management of conflict, in community mobilization, and promoting analytical thinking and responsible expression.
