Digital Resource Book

Introduction

This Resource book is a collection of animations and short videos that present different tools to support children in their peace building activities. The tools will be useful to develop visions and understanding of peace, to document and assess experiences and situations; and to plan further action.

Vision and Planning Tools

Vision of Peace

This tool will help you to explore and express what peace looks like for you. It is helpful to imagine what peace looks like and to describe what this means to you in creative ways. When you share your ideas with others this tool can be useful as it may help in giving the direction of what your peace building efforts should lead to.

Agents of Change Tool

This is another way of using the Body Mapping Tool that is helpful to explore what an “ideal agent of change” looks like. You can share your views and ideas about what is important to think, say and do for an agent of change or an agent of peace. It helps to find the traits or qualities of an agent of change or peace by looking at all parts of the body. For this tool it is especially important to work in separate groups according to age and gender, to make sure that different people will be familiar with the results.

Exploring Tools

The Balloon Tool

This tool will help to explore what peace building means to you and which people you think should be part of peace building. The tool also encourages you to share your ideas about what supports peace building, and children’s participation in peace building; and the obstacles which prevent peace building or children’s participation in peace building. The findings from using this tool may help you in your action initiatives to increase children’s role in peace building.

Mapping, Assessing and Planning Tools

The Timeline Tool

This tool is good for looking at history, achievements and challenges of the peace building work that children have been part of in your families, clubs, schools and communities. It is good for finding the important moments since you started peace building work, and finding out what went well and why, and what did not go so well and why and how you dealt with that.

The H-Assessment Tool

This tool is useful for discussing, listing and assessing strengths and weaknesses of your group’s peace building activities. There is also a space for the bright ideas on how you can improve and further develop your work. This can be used to help you assess and strengthen your peace building work.

The Body Mapping Tool

This tool helps to find out what have been your experiences in a situation like an armed conflict. The tool helps to look at all parts of the body to see how the situation has affected girls and boys thinking, actions, feelings, behaviors etc. For this tool it is especially important to work in separate groups according to age and gender, to make sure that important information from different groups of children will be available.

The Risk Mapping Tool

This tool is useful to identify and show where are the safe places for children and youth and the unsafe places in your village, neighborhood or town in the world you live in. It is useful for further planning on how to reduce risks and to make communities more safe for girls and boys. 

The Conflict Tree Tool

This tool is a useful way to show causes and impact of the violent conflict or post-violent-conflict situation you are dealing with. The roots are deep and underlying reasons for the conflict, such as facts and ideas people have about the past and present. The trunk is the actual situation itself, the ongoing violent conflict or after the conflict.  The branches are the consequences of the conflict, its impact on you and your friends, on other children and young people, on your family, community and country.

The Circle Analysis Tool

This tool is a practical way of exploring and analyzing what you are already doing to build peace in your family, club, school, local community and in your country. It gives you a chance to show what peace building activities you are doing in different settings.   It is also useful for planning what you will do to make peace in your everyday life, in your family, club, school etc. 

Strengthening Groups and Organizations Tool

The Spider Tool

You can use this to show and evaluate key parts of your child groups; to look closely at how well your club or group has been doing in each of its activities, values and developments. Then you can look into where you plan to be in a shorter or longer time and prepare a plan. This exercise will need a lot of thought and discussion, so expect to spend several days – a few hours each day – for creating and working with your Spider Tool.