Project name: Paz para Mambrú 

Reason for doing the project: After more than 60 years of armed conflict, Colombia has the challenge of directing its efforts to build a more peaceful society. In this process, it is necessary to involve the entire population in the complex task of overcoming the legacy left by this period and build a culture of peace. This peace, not understood exclusively as the absence of conflict, but as a social relationship involving all Colombians, focused on the exercise of human rights and social promotion. To achieve this objective we propose Paz para Mambrú, as as an initiative to rethink ourselves as a society and build new worldviews and interactions that result in a social fabric based on peace. 

Project purpose: Promote the culture of peace in Colombian children through the development of a contextualized and innovative platform for the design and production of ludic and pedagogical tools for caregivers and educators, oriented to the formation of attitudes, values and skills in, one of the most important stages of human development, early childhood. 

Project activities: The project had three main activities for its development. 

• Research and contextualization

• Tools development

• Evaluation

Scope and result of the project:

Our main results were:

• Generation of a practical understanding of the processes of internalization of attitudes, values and skills for the formation of peaceful citizens.

• Provide an easily accessible platform that promotes creativity focused on producing tools capable of enriching peace education processes.

• Reinforce children’s subjectivities that are built in the Colombian context from the inter and intrapersonal perspective.

What was your project's main problem? 

Perhaps one of the difficulties we face is that almost all peace Education articles and initiatives focus on older ages and from a discursive approach. In this sense, our bet was on early childhood, emphasizing on generating practical proposals. Having few references similar to our project made us feel a little lost on how to start creating the tools. 

How did you overcome your problems during the project? 

To address this difficulty, we focused on making an exhaustive review of all the proposals focused on socioemotional development in childhood in Colombia and the world. We also sought advice from leaders of other projects, experts, teachers, etc. 

What advice would you give to young people who want to influence their society?

Networking. It is very important to be able to connect with people who are sensitive and motivated by social and environmental phenomena, with whom we can enrich our ideas and strategies.