African Students For Interfaith Tolerance which is a youth-led peacebuilding organization promoting co-existence, interreligious dialogue, interfaith harmony and youth empowerment has launched its maiden edition of young peacebuilders fellowship programme for young people who are interested in getting involved in peacebuilding.
African Students For Interfaith Tolerance is one of the newest members of United Network of Young Peacebuilders in the West and Central Africa region.
The ‘Young Peacebuilders Fellowship Programme’ as it is known is designed to offer young people who are interested in peacebuilding an opportunity to be trained, coached and mentored by seasoned experts of compassion, dialogue and youth, peace and security.
In today’s world, young people play multifaceted roles. They can be heroes or heroins as well as victims, saviours and courageous in the midst of crisis such as covid-19 pandemic). Young people may also be used as agents of violence and terror. This makes the youth a key target group for radicalization and recruitment by violent extremist groups.
These prevailing challenges makes it almost impossible to treat youth’s issues as side issues. But part and parcel of the bigger picture and at the center of peace, security and development discussions. The recently launched fellowship aims to offer accessible training and capacity building to upcoming peacebuilders which is fundamentally absent currently.
The maiden edition of the fellowship programme will be organized virtually and is expected to span over a period of three months with in-person engagements as well visits to religious leaders and sites depending on the covid-19 situation. Topics to be covered include: Digesting the concepts: Peace, Violence and Conflict, SDGs in perspective: Shaping the future together, Activating positive peace and cost of violence, Understanding interreligious dialogue, Exploring peacebuilding & policy frameworks etc.
After the successful completion of the maiden edition, the sustainability plan of the fellowship programme is to have two cohorts yearly. With more in-person interactions than virtual.
