UER youth trained to identify signals of conflict

Youth Alive , a Non Governmental Organization operating in the Upper East Region, at the weekend trained 30 selected young men working at lorry stations on how to identify early warning signals of conflict during the political campaign period, the elections and afterwards.

The training, held in Bolgatanga, falls under one of the four programme arms of Youth Alive (YA) aimed at building the capacity of Youth in Governance with support from STAR GHANA.

The training took participants through the definition of conflict, how it comes about, how to identify one and also how to prevent them.

Mr. Konrad Balig, Upper East Regional Programme Officer of YA, said youth around lorry stations and in the streets had mostly been used by politicians to initiate acts that led to violence.

He said the category of participants selected for the workshop was a group that had not been targeted in terms of any formal training, and often fell prey to violent circumstances.

He said such youth who lived on the streets and fended for themselves engaged in all forms of violence to survive and above all suffered interruptions by political parties through which they exhibited some form of aggressiveness in their day to day activities.

He said earlier training on peace building and conflict had helped the participants to discern on issues and the training on early warning signals would help them to make informed decisions on how to deal with issues of conflict whenever they identified one.

Mr. Alfred Yelyang, the resource person, took participants through conflict and violence, types of conflict and mediation processes.

He said training the young ones not to engage in violent acts was one way of cutting down on such acts in senior secondary schools, tertiary institutions and among street youth.**