Youth Living Peace

Youth Living Peace is a three-year program, which began in 2015, to prevent and respond to sexual and gender-based violence against girls and women in high-violence settings in Brazil and in post-conflict settings in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). By engaging youth as agents of change from a young age, Youth Living Peace is designed to help adolescent boys and girls heal from violence, while providing critical school-based training for violence prevention. The program’s overall goal is that adolescent girls and boys experience greater gender equality and increased freedom from violence through individual and community change, as well as supportive school environments. Youth Living Peace is led by Promundo in Brazil and Heal Africa in DRC, and supported by the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. The program targets adolescent girls and boys who have witnessed and/or experienced violence in their homes, while engaging them to promote respect, gender equality, and nonviolence through group and individual therapy, group education, and school-wide campaigns. In addition, the program promotes partnerships and advocacy with schools and with policymakers to provide the framework for preventing and responding to violence more broadly. By engaging adolescent girls and boys, community members, educators, government officials, and civil society organizations, Youth Living Peace works at multiple levels to prevent violence against women and girls and to respond to the needs of adolescents who have experienced violence. It serves to provide and increase awareness of services to respond to and address these adolescents’ needs, as well as to encourage critical thinking and changes in attitudes and behaviors in order to prevent future perpetration of violence. Youth Living Peace builds on Promundo’s and its implementing partner organizations’ evidence-based experiences in the prevention of violence against women and girls through group education (Program H and Program M) and group therapy (Living Peace), which have been implemented and adapted in over 22 countries. It also adopts ideas inspired by a rigorously evaluated US-based intervention (Expect Respect), which provides group support for adolescents who have witnessed or experienced violence, particularly in dating relationships. These methodologies provide the foundation for Youth Living Peace, and they are being implemented in each country in school settings. Youth Living Peace aims to reach 1,100 adolescents, 8,840 community members, as well as educational staff and stakeholders in education policy by the end of 2017.