Young volunteers from Trujillo share their concept of “peace” on International Youth Day

The United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNLIREC) and the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Programme have been developing a regional project aimed at young volunteers in Peru, Colombia, Honduras and Trinidad and Tobago. The objective of this project is to support the States – through the empowerment of young people – in advancing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Throughout the project, young volunteer leaders will enhance their skills pertaining to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, and participatory indicators will be developed. Multiple training sessions have been structured within that framework, focusing on issues of youth, peace, security, disarmament and volunteerism in the city of Trujillo, Peru. On this occasion, about 70 young volunteers were trained on Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th August 2017.
Theoretical and practical tools were provided during these training sessions for the future development of participatory indicators which will complement the SDG 16 indicators. The purpose of these indicators will be to highlight a local projection of the young people of Trujillo as to how to measure the level of human security and armed violence in their region. Young people were educated, through three workshops, on the theme, with emphasis being placed on the steps to be taken in creating indicators. After this initial overview, the methodology developed for the project is expected to be applied in future workshops, and the group of volunteers will remain to outline the valid indicators and the proxies.
On the other hand, during the work sessions, the first audiovisual product of the project was presented in Peru in recognition of International Youth Day, 12th August. This year, special emphasis was placed on young people’s ability to participate in the “configuration of true peace and to contribute to conflict prevention and transformation, inclusion, social justice, reconciliation and sustainable peace.” As part of the celebration, the young volunteers prepared a video which depicted each participant’s view of peace. The video was posted on social media using the main hashtag #SayUrPeace.
Source: UNLIREC