European Youth Peace Forum 2015, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, December 8 – 12 2015
(Cluj is the EU Youth Capital 2015)
We are now discussing the organising of the European Youth Peace Forum 2015 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The aim will be to organise a massive forum / gathering bringing together at least 1000+ youth actively involved/engaged in peace movements, peace building, and working for positive social change and transformation from across Europe as well as internationally. The Forum itself will be a platform for hundreds of workshops, seminars, events and practical design and planning sessions organised along 10 themes, together with a parallel ‘Peace Festival’ with arts, music, film across the city. There will be themes of the Festival on:
– overcoming and addressing discrimination and violent extremism within Europe and internationally;
– building a real student/youth peace movement across Europe and around the world;
– peace education – in schools, universities and our societies;
– overcoming, countering and transcending militarism and militarisation ;
– Solidarity in Peacebuilding with Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Palestine-Israel (with participants from these countries and focusing on how to build, support, strengthen European-wide and international engagement to support people’s nonviolent and peace movements within these countries);
– Living Peace: focusing on how to be, live, practice peace within and in our lives, communities, countries and the world;
– Peace and the Arts: which will involve a huge peace festival through the week including poetry, photography, theatre, living art, a film festival and more;
– Doing Peacebuilding: including practical training, sessions on in-depth review and learning from lessons and experiences in the field, and gaining, growing, deepening PRACTICAL expertise, skills and knowledge in DOING applied peacebuilding, violence prevention, reconciliation and healing after war and violence and conflict transformation
Our vision in preparing the EYPF is to make it a ‘platform’ where incredible organisations, individuals and movements from across Europe and bring in their experiences, lessons, work, inspiration – where we can organise forums, sessions, working groups on key issues and themes important to us and on bringing peacebuilding forward practically – in our countries, across Europe and internationally.
This will be one of the major milestones in the peace movement, in engagement for true/real change in our countries, Europe and internationally, and in peacebuilding….and strengthening, growing a new generation of youth engagement in peace across Europe and the world.
Keep updated here!