Teaching staff of secondary schools in the fight against violence!

We are witnessing an increasing number of violent situations in secondary schools amongst peers. As a result of this fact we are aware that we need a comprehensive approach to the prevention of peer violence.

As a response to this, there is inherently a unique approach to working with young people in the field of violence prevention and promotion of healthy lifestyles, which is recognized worldwide as one of the world’s top 12 approaches in the global education*. We call it “Program Y – Youth – Innovative Approaches in GBV Prevention and Young Men and Women Healthy Life Styles Promotion“. 

Precisely this approach is applied and will be applied in the next three years in secondary schools in Banja Luka (High School of Catering, Trade and Tourism, Vocational High School and Agricultural High School), as the comprehensive program of violence prevention and promotion of healthy lifestyles among young people in these schools, within the projects implemented by CARE International and Perpetuum Mobile in Banja Luka and the region:

• The project “Promoting Healthier Lifestyles among Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Challenging Gender Stereotypes II” or Young Men Initiative II (YMI II) was launched on 1 December 2017 and supported by the Swiss Government, OAK Foundation, Austrian Development Agency and CARE Germany-Luxembourg.
• The project “Men and Boys as Partners in Promoting Gender Equality and prevention of Youth Extremism and Violence in the Balkans” was launched on 1 October 2017 and supported by the Austrian Development Agency.

We conducted the training of professors and teaching staff of secondary schools in order to familiarize them more with the program, but also we worked together on its implementation. In the next three years, a combined approach will be applied in non-formal education in which the teaching staff of secondary schools will apply the Program Y Manual together with educators from our organization and implement it among the high school students.

Precisely these conclusions came out from the “Training for teaching staff of secondary schools on the application of the Program Y Manual in the work with young people” held by our organization in the Hotel Kardial (Banja Vrućica, Teslić) in the period from 26-28 February 2018.

* Young Men Initiative, a project implemented by CARE International and 9 partner organizations in the Balkans, which implements the Program Y in its work, won the prestigious Global Education Innovation Award awarded by the Global Education Network Europe – GENE) as the only winner outside the European Union.