At the Rotary Melbourne Club Lunch on Wednesday 23 September 26, Jessica Dudley from Young Change Agents joined us to share the Youth Peacebuil6ding Design Challenge, a national program funded by the Rotary Club of Balwyn with support from Rotary South Pacific.
Across a one day workshop, students are taken through a design thinking process: starting with empathy for who in their community is affected by conflict or division, defining a real problem, building a solution, and pitching it by the end of the day.
At Ashwood High School one group tackled everyday racism by designing a global eats night 'Global Bite', a different culture's menu each month cooked by local volunteers. Another built a board game 'Circle Time' teaching conflict resolution to younger students, with two in every five games donated to schools in remote and low resource communities.
Because Balwyn funded the platform resources, every school in Australia can now access the challenge for free, and 2,500 young people across 64 schools in every state are taking part, including 565 here in Victoria. We're delighted that our own Honorary Member, Associate Professor Tilman Ruff AM, founding international chair of ICAN and part of the campaign awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, has agreed to be the program's Ambassador. Judges include Dr Tania Miletic from the University of Melbourne's Initiative for Peacebuilding and Charlie Allen APM.
Entries are judged in November, with a virtual showcase on 18 November. If you'd like to find out more about supporting a school to run the Peacebuilding workshop, or about Young Change Agents in general, Jess would love to hear from you at jessica@youngchangeagents.com. Under the Balwyn funding, Young Change Agents has delivered the workshop at Ashwood High School, with Deepdene Primary School and Swinburne Senior Secondary College booked for October and further schools being confirmed.
