August 28 – September 2, in Romania, Sibiu, FYCA’s partner organisation, ECYC (European Confederation of Youth Clubs) organized international training on “Youth work for the prevention of violent extremism of youth”. It continued the topic which became priority and was devoted to modern and important issues such as extremism and violence, hate speech and discrimination, radicalization, youth and youth work fighting against these problems. In the 6 day program there were 25 participants from 15 countries.
Diana Yeghiazaryan and Harutyun Tsatryan presented Federation of Youth Clubs of Armenia, which is the member organization of ECYC. The participants were informed on the main problems of discrimination and violence, political, economic, environmental radicalizm, increazing extremism in the world. The participants from different countries presented the situation in their own countries and discussed the issue from the point of view of regional and paneuropean security.
The most important part of the project was the development of non-formal education tools by participants fighting against violence and extremism. The participants presented tools developed both individually and by a team, which will be improved and enhanced later and will be involved in future projects used by youth work professionals.
FYCA’s member Harutyun Tsatryan invented and introduced a method of negotiation process named “A Game of Thrones” related with the prevention of extremism and violence. Participants liked the method and expressed it during the evaluation. Diana Yeghiazaryan suggested a tool “The meeting point” which aims to encourage the dialogue between youth and radicalized people, the discussion and the development of inclusive attitude, strategies between them.
The participants of the project took part also in the online campaign supporting ECYC’s initiative to value youth work at the following platform. On the last day, the participants visited Youth Center of Sibiu and got acquainted with Romanian experience of youth work.
We should add that from the June 2017, ECYC has started its work plan devoted to the fight against violent extremism and radicalization of youth. International European organization ECYC promotes the importance of the youth role and involvment in the prevention of violent extremism and considers the later one of the possible solutions.