What This Toolkit Is For
This toolkit is designed to support youth work, dialogue, and community-based learning in contexts shaped by war, displacement, polarization, and social transformation. It brings together trauma-informed, participatory, and creative methodologies that help young people reflect on lived experience, rebuild trust, strengthen resilience, and explore values such as dignity, inclusion, peace, and agency.
The toolkit was developed for facilitators working with young people affected directly or indirectly by conflict, migration, and social change — including displaced youth, host communities, activists, volunteers, and youth leaders. Rather than focusing on knowledge transmission or debate, the toolkit prioritizes experience-based learning, embodied reflection, and relational processes that allow participants to engage at their own pace and depth.
Methodological Foundations
Trauma-informed Facilitation
Trauma-informed facilitation, emphasizing safety, choice, consent, and nervous-system regulation. Participants are never required to share personal or traumatic stories; silence, observation, and symbolic expression are recognized as valid forms of participation.
Dialogical and Relational Approaches
Dialogical and relational approaches value listening, empathy, and mutual recognition over persuasion or argumentation.
Creative and Embodied Methods
Creative and embodied methods include art-based practices, movement, roleplay, and symbolism — used not as therapy or performance, but as accessible languages for meaning-making when words are limited or insufficient.
Participatory and Emancipatory Methodologies
Participatory and emancipatory methodologies (such as Forum Theatre and Living Library) invite participants to explore power, stereotypes, and social dynamics through action, perspective-taking, and collective reflection.
These methodologies are intentionally combined to address the complex realities young people face in post-crisis and displacement contexts, where emotional safety, identity, and trust are as important as skills or information.
Toolkit Is Structured Around Three Types of Formats:
Extended Workshops
Longer, process-oriented formats that allow trust-building, deep reflection, and integration over time. These are suitable for experienced facilitators and groups ready for deeper engagement.
Core Exercises
Focused activities that can stand alone or be embedded within longer programs.
Supporting Exercises
Short, grounding or reflective practices that enhance safety, cohesion, and emotional regulation.
Guiding Principles
Participation is voluntary
Participation is voluntary, and depth is always a choice.
Facilitator as space holder
The facilitator’s role is to hold the space, not to interpret, analyze, or “fix” participants’ experiences.
Reflection over intensity
Reflection focuses on meaning, values, and resources, preventing retraumatization and emotional overload.
Clear openings and closings
Clear openings and closings — including grounding and de-roling — are essential parts of every process.
Ethical use and consent
Documentation, recording, or public sharing is avoided unless explicitly agreed upon and ethically appropriate.
How to Use This Toolkit
This toolkit is not a script to be followed rigidly. It is a living resource that invites adaptation to different cultural, linguistic, and social contexts. Facilitators are encouraged to select, combine, and pace activities according to the group’s needs, their own competencies, and the sensitivity of the topic.
Ultimately, the toolkit exists to support young people in reconnecting with themselves and others — not by explaining their experiences for them, but by creating conditions where listening, expression, and shared humanity can safely emerge.