OSCE SMM trains young Ukrainians in facilitating dialogue

The Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine held a three-day training course on dialogue facilitation for young people from 7 to 9 September in Kyiv.

Its main goal was to acquaint young people in Ukraine with tools for promoting dialogue and mutual understanding across the country. The participants developed skills in dialogue facilitation and conflict analysis.

Thirty young people from all over Ukraine, including 17 from Donbas, took part in the event. The participants are part of the Youth Contact Group, a youth for dialogue network launched recently by the SMM.

"During this training I realized that we share common values, and this should be the starting point for dialogue," said Anna, a student, who recently moved from Donetsk to Kyiv.

“For me the hardest part was to put myself on the opposite side of the conflict, to imagine someone else’s system of values and to think from the perspective their needs and feelings. I think it is important to try to understand the other side, because we need to listen, not impose, in order to build a dialogue,” said Dmytro, a participant from Horlivka in the Donetsk region.

The training is part of the Mission’s youth dialogue initiative. The project aims to build bridges between young people from different parts of Ukraine and give them an opportunity to contribute to normalization and stabilization in the country.

“The idea behind our initiative is to allow young Ukrainians to move the process of dialogue facilitation forward and help them realize their own ideas, rather than telling them what we think is best,” Nicholas Detsch, a monitoring officer from the SMM said. “We hope that we can really give young people a stronger voice in pushing for a better future.”