Youth for Peace

We, young people of diverse religions and spiritual expressions, coming from different cultures and tradition backgrounds from Bosnia and Herzegovina, have established Youth for Peace to promote dialogue, interfaith and inter-ethnic cooperation, to end all kinds of violence and to create culture of peace and justice for youth. We are striving to have empowered young people who will be initiators and promoters of positive changes and will create better future through building society of equal opportunities without prejudices.

Our members come from different ethnic and religious groups, which were very often in conflict in the past. We draw our strength from the desire for sustainable coexistence in the same country, organizing a numbers of different activities for young people and conveying to them our own experience of dialogue and coexistence. The work of our Organization is based on sharing of experience, by providing a positive example of coexistence and spreading the unity spirit among the youth. Main mission and the goals of the organization are aimed at gathering young people, giving education and encouraging activism. From the past experience, it is obvious that young people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds throughout whole Bosnia and Herzegovina do not have the opportunity to meet, socialize, talk, learn from each other, share life experiences and problems, nor do they have any joint activities. Also there is a lot of ignorance among young people when it comes to basic values of different religions including their own. Thanks to the violence burden past; politics, society and media are placing distorted image to young people, which creates an obstacle for building bright, common future.

Educations that Youth for Peace offers to youth in BiH are aimed at mapping the similarities and differences, while finding values that are common for all of them, through dialogues and conversations on those topics that differentiate us. Young people are taught how to communicate while respecting others and their needs; quite often different perspectives can help in understanding each other. The workshops are interactive, moderated by the Youth for Peace trainers, who finished different kinds of trainings in BiH and abroad, got their licenses and gain experience throughout years of working with young people.