About Us
Introduction
Forgotten Diaries is a unique project which aims to raise awareness of the several under-reported “forgotten” conflicts currently occurring around the world and empower young people living in these zones with the skills and tools they need to start and grow community development and peace building projects.
We believe that young people, if empowered, hold the key to effective community development and building a culture and attitude of lasting peace and non-violence within communities that have been torn apart by war and violence.
We have demonstrated this through supporting young people to do just this and seeing very real results.
Forgotten Diaries is the first project of this kind. FD was started in 2008 and is run by a dedicated team of young volunteers from around the world. FD has already received tens of thousands of visits and won praise from organizations including the Pulitzer Centre, Oxfam, Microsoft and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and won several awards including the World Youth Summit Award and the World Aware Education Award.
Pictured: FD sponsored projects run by youth in Rwanda (Raising awareness of and promoting human rights for people with disabilities and a campaign to reduce discrimination towards the disabled) and Liberia (Using cartoons and posters to spread messages about non-violence to youth including vulnerable youth and former child soldiers. One on one coaching on non violence will also be conducted on some youth)
Pictured: An example of FD’s blogs maintained by young people living in each of the forgotten conflict zones and promoting citizen journalism
Background
It is a little known fact that there are over 100 ongoing conflicts and crisis currently around the world. Outside of the Middle East, most of these conflicts are shunned by, and receive almost no attention from the media despite many of these conflicts having claimed thousands of lives. Shunned by the international community at large they have become the world’s ‘forgotten conflicts’.
Several millions children and young people are confronted daily with war, and have no chance to tell the outer world about their lives, hopes and expectations, nor the way they perceive conflicts and their struggle to survive.
An even less known fact is that of the vastly untapped potential of young people in these zones and the significant role they can play in peace building and community development.
These two little known facts form the heart of the motivation driving the team of seven hard working young people behind ‘Forgotten Diaries’ (FD).
FD also aims to continue the long-standing tradition of young people keeping a diary of their lives and their struggles in conflicts (as much as those of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic). The internationally acclaimed organisation, Youth Action for Change (YAC) offers them a platform though this project to voice their thoughts, feelings and hopes and promotes ongoing dialogues between young people from all sides of the identified conflicts as well as the global audience.
Aim
Providing young people living in areas affected by neglected conflicts with the possibility to make their voice heard through the media, by reporting on their daily life via an especially dedicated platform for the exchange of information and analysis of critical situations, expressing their right to peace while engaging their peers and the global audience into concrete action to build more peaceful communities and promote development and non-violence.
Mission
- Giving children and young people the opportunity and the tools to report on their daily lives and the conflict they live in effectively empowering them as ‘citizen journalists’
- Educate the global audience about unreported and underreported conflicts, crisis and issues while giving them a chance to get involved through a host of activities (campaigns, advocacy efforts and fundraising)
- Empower young people to develop and implement youth-led, on-the-ground peace-building and community development projects in the countries and communities targeted by ‘Forgotten Diaries’
Objectives
‘Forgotten Diaries’ is a long-term initiative and its objectives are as follow:
- Select five young people aged 15-29 from each of ten of the most pressing conflict zones, making sure to represent a variety of points of view, backgrounds, ethnicities and gender balance, and offer them a one-month online training course on basic reporting techniques and on the ICTs and tools to be used throughout the project (blogs, podcasts, videos and other), releasing a certificate at the end of it. The project will be extended to cover more countries after the pilot phase.
- Develop a website which will be used as a unique tool through which the neglected voices of youth in conflict zones will be heard by the global audiences and interested parties in the media and online. Focused campaigns and advocacy efforts will then contribute to make these intercultural exchanges and youth-led program known through the media, with preference to the online community.
- Promote the exchange of perspectives among participants (from within the same country and among all the countries involved) through their weekly blogs, posts, videos, interviews and photos, with a view to foster long-term intercultural dialogue and an enhanced understanding of different backgrounds and experiences of conflicts.
- Engage the global audience – young people and adult alike – in an ongoing dialogue with participants about their perspectives and the conflicts they live in through blogs and forums, encouraging them to contribute to the project by also taking part in campaigns, advocacy efforts and contributing their time and skills in different fields. The global audience will also have the opportunity to volunteer in assisting youth projects in conflict zones and in advocacy efforts.
- Raise funds online to help participants and local organisations in the selected conflicts plan and implement local activities in different countries in order to reach out to and empower several hundreds more young people and their communities.
