Accra, September 17, 2017//-Generations for Peace (GFP),with its local partner Youngstars Development Initiative (YDI), has started the implementation of its latest peace building programme dubbed Dialogue for Peace Programme (DPP) in Accra, Ghana.
DPP is focusing on engaging members of the country’s two main political youth clubs-the socialist National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the conservative New Patriotic Party (NPP) – at the University of Ghana in dialogue sessions.
The DPP is based on the Transformative Dialogue approach which gives people the opportunity to talk about issues they consider important, using words of their own choosing. It aims to increase participants’ understanding of the conflict, their ability to respond to it positively, and interact with the others involved constructively.
The Country Director of YDI, Naa Adei Boateng commenting on the programme said “GFP chose to pilot the Transformative Dialogue approach, as it matches our overall mandate of participatory, volunteer-led programming. This approach sees conflict as arising from a crisis in human interaction.”
She added that “the people and groups involved in conflict situations relate to each other in hostile, aggressive, and prejudicial ways, which can lead to violence and this is where we come in.”
Madam Boateng explained: ” Transformative Dialogue is different from other approaches because it is participant-led and non-directive. It is the participants themselves who pick the topic of conversation and who ultimately decide which direction the dialogue programme will go in”.
“This party-driven approach to dialogue provides people caught up in a conflict with a space and a chance to speak and be heard; but, it is up to the participants to decide what to do with that opportunity”.
DPP is currently being piloted in three countries namely Ghana, Georgia and the Republic of Macedonia. In all three, a DPP was chosen as it was better suited to the context than GFP’s other vehicles for peace building.
Instructively, Youngstars Development Initiative is an international nongovernmental organisationthat focuses on enhancing leadership among youth, improving the competencies of youth organisations involved in development programmes, and strengthening youth representation on issues that affect their well being for nation building;
Generations For Peace (GFP) is a Jordan-based global non-profit organization founded by HRH Prince Feisal Al Hussein and Sarah Kabbani Al Feisal, dedicated to sustainable peace building and conflict transformation through sport, arts, advocacy, dialogue and empowerment.
GFP uses sport as an entry point to engage with children and youth, and its carefully-facilitated sport-based games provide a vehicle for integrated education and behavior change. In addition to the sport-based approaches, GFP has also developed arts, advocacy, dialogue, and empowerment activities to support conflict transformation with children, youth and adults in different contexts.
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