Youth, Peace, and Society

Community building is peacebuilding.

Our Program

The Youth, Peace, and Society Program works at the intersection of youth leadership, social conflicts, and peacebuilding. The program seeks to identify, analyze, and bring attention to the contributions that youth make to the peaceful transformation of violent conflicts and to building local and global peace. We document and further develop best practices among youth community leaders, by rigorously engaging in the field with youth collectives through our participatory action research approach, Fieldwork for Social Transformation. Because social transformations take place at different levels of society, we serve as a platform where academia, civil society, government, and the private sector meet to negotiate and bring about change together.

Program Objectives:

Identify and document the contributions that youth leaders make to the peaceful transforming of violent conflicts.
Identify and analyze how different sectors of society can bring value to building local and global peace.
Craft and promote innovative research, practice, and education to strengthen and develop the leadership capabilities of youth seeking social transformations in urban and rural communities around the world.

We have three main areas of work. Individually, each addresses a particular objective, and together they make up the systemic nature of the Youth, Peace, and Society approach.

Every area of work involves youth leaders as collaborators. Along the years of archival and fieldwork research, we have noticed the rich transformative practices of youth leaders and youth collectives who live in violent conflict settings. Most possess innovative technologies and grounded knowledge that are pivotal for social transformation, as well as powerful creativity and motivation which is central for this kind of work. Guided by this, our research and practice is done in collaboration with youth in a way that our academic research is enriched and strengthened by their lived experiences in transforming conflicts, and our practice–including our pedagogy– benefits and further develops the work of youth in the ground.

In sum, the YPS program is a space where youth leaders meet to exchange knowledge(s) and practices–among them and with the academic world–to then be used in their communities. In this space youth are met with our program’s theoretical and methodological support and with the opportunity to make their work known to others.

Peacebuilding Students doing Fielwork in Comuna 13, Medellin

Our Work

YPS Leadership Program

This is an adaptive leadership program designed to advance the work of youth leaders around the world.

It is based on experiential learning and grounded theory and practice. The program offers frameworks and tools to effectively foster transformative leadership capacities to youth working in different social settings, from complex organizational environments to conflict-ridden communities.

We offer a cohesive 10 day certificate program, at Columbia University campus, and a module-based approach that is designed depending on the needs of the organization or community where it is offered.