Capacity Building

From 21-24 July 2020, Peace Dialogue NGO in collaboration with its partners Une Terre Culturelle Association and German-French Youth Office implemented an intercultural exchange project entitled Journalism without Borders which was aimed at introducing young people from Armenia, France and Germany to the history of journalism and promoting their active participation in community life through capacity building with the help of democratic tools.

The participants were involved in the activities of the three-day workshop in two parallel formats: working separately in national teams and working jointly within the international team consisting of the representatives of the three countries via online tools.

Peace Dialogue NGO recently completed work on its civic journalism training project for Armenian youth from the Lori, Shirak and Tavush regions funded by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives. Various examples of participants’ work can now be viewed on the project’s new online platform here (in Armenian).

On 3-7 December, Peace Dialogue NGO organized its second civic journalism training session as part of the Training Next-Generation Civic Journalists in Northern Armenia as Future Democracy Watchdogs project. Youth interested in civic journalism and possible careers as journalists and broadcast news reporters travelled to Dilijan to attend learning sessions on how to make interesting, compelling photojournalism reports and short videos.

Peace Dialogue organized and hosted its first training in civic journalism for regional youth from northern Armenian between 29 September and 2 October in Gyumri. 18 young men and women (ages 16-25) traveled to Gyumri to attend an event led by the creative producer at Armenian Public TV (H1) Armen Sargsyan and media trainer Mane Papyan. The four-day event, organized as part of a project entitled “Preparing New Generation Civic Journalists in the Northern Regions of Armenia” which is funded by the Canadian government’s Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI), began with discussions on journalistic theory and what the role of journalists is in democratic societies.

On August 2-12, the 3rd Summer School organized within the scope of “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art” took place in Borjomi, Georgia. Around 40 activists from Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Germany, and Georgia participated in the final meeting of the four-year program initiated by Peace Dialogue NGO and its German partner OWEN e.V.

According to official numbers, more than 496,000 people were forcibly evicted from Chechnya and Ingushetia by Stalin’s regime in 1944. The official documents state that 411,000 people were sent to Kazakhstan and 86,000 to Kyrgyzstan. Other sources put the number much higher, at over 650,000. Chechen historians claim that about 400,000 people died during the deportation.

“People were put in cattle wagons, which would stop on the way only to let people relieve themselves” – tells Hava Mahmudova, remembering the stories her mother told her about the deportation of her family to Kazakhstan. – “During the stops, soldiers demanded that the bodies of the dead were unloaded…

A four-day workshop entitled Gender Approach in Community Organizing was held in Zugdidi, Georgia from 9thto 12thof May, 2018. The event was initiated by Tsitsino Shengelia from the Centre for Civic Activism from Zugdidi in the framework of the project “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art”.