Training and Skill Building

Youth Speak works with young people to ensure not only that their ideas are supported, but that they have the necessary skills to resolve challenges among their teams and ensure project sustainability. 

COMMUNITY CIVIC EDUCATION FOR PEACEBUILDING

This program is funded by the Mennonite Central Committee and is designed around cultivating a shared community and sense of identity among youth currently residing in Duhok, whether from displaced or host communities. The project is designed to help young people develop skills to build community with their neighbors, engage community members in discussions on social issues, build trust among groups from diverse backgrounds, and implement activities designed to promote social change. 

AVP AND CASCADE TRAININGS

This project was funded by Lutheran World Federation and Church of Sweden. The project involved training six Youth Speak volunteers (3 male, 3 female from refugee and host community backgrounds) in the Alternatives to Violence Project curriculum, and upon their completion, providing an opportunity for those volunteers to practice their newfound facilitation skills by conducting cascade training for youth interested in becoming peacebuilding activists. The trainings were attended by 60 youth from diverse religious and residential status’ in Duhok (40 female, 20 male), and provided skills designed specifically to empower people even from marginalized communities (such as youth and women) with peacebuilding skills, advocacy skills, and awareness raising skills. Additionally, the Alternatives to Violence Project takes an approach to peacebuilding that understands that a lack of peace is often rooted in personal and generational trauma, and one cannot be holistically addressed without the other.    

SUPPORTING ALTERNATIVES TO VIOLENCE PROJECT NETWORK IN IRAQ AND KURDISTAN

This program was funded by Mennonite Central Committee, and involved providing a network of 38 peacebuilding activists in Duhok, Ninewa Plains, and Sulaymaniyah with the skills to self-organize and remain sustainable as an all-volunteer youth network. The volunteers are approximately 60% female, and the project focuses on peacebuilding, trauma healing, advocacy and awareness raising, and youth empowerment.  The participants in this project come from a wide array of religious, ethnic, and residential status’. 

Designing community solutions

This project, which was was funded by the University of Ottawa’s Community Mobilization in Crisis program in partnership with Open Society Foundations, included a five week course for 12 youth (4 refugee, 4 IDP, and 4 host community, 50% male/female) to learn advocacy and awareness raising skills to apply to peacebuilding and youth and women’s empowerment initiatives. The course provided youth with the skills to design and implement initiatives that did not rely on outside funding or NGO support, but that instead relied on mutual aid, community material and human assets, and creative problem solving to complete their initiatives. From this course, five initiatives were designed and executed in Duhok, Domiz Camp, and Kabartu Camp

SOLIYA CONNECT PROGRAM

As part of their mentorship training, Youth Speak partnered with Soliya to provide young people in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq training in 21st Century skills such as critical thinking, cross-cultural communication, and media literacy through Soliya's flagship program, Connect. The Connect Program allows young people the opportunity to engage with their peers across the globe on community issues through Soliya's online platform. Youth Speak then worked with program participants to integrate and adapt the skills they learned through Connect into their community projects, providing them hands-on opportunities to put those skills to use in their everyday lives and community activism.