For communities in the south of Libya to have a chance to rebuild, there is a real and immediate need for programming focused on community cohesion and peacebuilding.
Due to the precarious economic and security situation for youth vulnerable to joining armed groups, participating in violent conflict, and exacerbating social cleavages in the south, there is an urgent need for interventions that encourage involved youth to be able to identify, empathize with and reach out to marginalized and at-risk communities. Skills in critical thinking, communication, and cooperation must be increased so these same youth are empowered to not only challenge proscribed narratives but propose new narratives that emphasize elements of commonality rather than exclusion and enhance social cohesion.
Objectives:
The goal of the youth empowerment project is to directly contribute toward wider social cohesion and support communities in addressing drivers of community-level instability, which may also foster violent conflict. The project will be geographically focused in the southern Libyan city of Sabha, which is a place of insecurity, inter-tribal fighting, and competition amongst militias for control over illegal commercial activities and smuggling routes. The project’s goal will be achieved by training a cohort of 13 active students and faculty as trainers of peacebuilding and critical soft skills and supporting their implementation of local sessions for the wider student body.
Aries Consult ltd made an expert available for the development of a training of trainers (TOT) for Sabha University students and faculty, with a focus on critical soft skills, as well as for the development, implementation and analysis of a training needs assessment.