Right to Peace
Child poverty is multidimensional
In the Global South mostly, child poverty can easily be attributed to the growing insecurity and conflicts. At End Child Poverty, we believe that peace is a prerequisite and a necessary condition for the redress of poverty. Our focus has majored on empowering communities to transform violent conflicts as well as advancing Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) and Social Cohesion. We believe that building peaceful societies is one step closer to ending child poverty.
Realizing this need, End Child Poverty initiated the Youth in Action network under the Regional Peace Program (RPP) to bring out the voices of children and youth in promoting poeace by preventing, trsansforming and countering violent extremism. Further, we have also been working with faith leaders; under the umbrella of the Regional Faith Leaders forum; to promote social cohesion by fostering FoRB.
Through RPP, we bring together children and youth from 7 countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia) The program was formed to empower and activate young people to lead peace, justice, inclusion, and social cohesion. Our approaches include dialogue, training, mentorship, learning and exchange visits, case studies, and research. In addition, youth leaders leaders conduct peace initiatives in their local communities in collaboration with each other, across their countries.
“The influence, power and population of the youth need to be sufficiently engaged in every aspect of the world’s programs and priorities. Let’s create a supportive environment to engage youth in excelling their talents, capacities and abilities to support our communities” – Fadhili Meta; Youth In Action, Tanzania
Transforming lives
Over the years, our work towards promoting peace has reached to tens of thousands of children and young people directly as well as hundreds of thousands through the media. Through this work, we have also mentored and transformed lives of young people in becoming community leaders and peace agents; as told in this testimony by Harun Mwadena, one of the young leaders within Youth In Action, from Kenya:
“After the forum with the knowledge I gained, I managed to bring together youth and women and inspire them to form social groups and networks, not just to express themselves and but also to initiate projects that promote peace in their communities. It is through this I realized that young people are willing to make sacrifices and demonstrate resilience to build their communities despite the challenges they face in their day to day lives.” – Harun Mwadena