"The Nobel Prize makes the concept of peace more comprehensible for students"

Maarten: "The Flemish Peace Institute is an independent research institute founded by and affiliated to the Flemish Parliament. The institute's mission is to conduct policy- and practice-oriented peace research in an independent manner. One of our research lines is peace education. We want to inspire teachers, school boards and educational policy officers with scientifically based information to get pupils thinking about themes such as peace, war and conflict."

"Those concepts are, of course, very big and complex. But they are also inseparable from human coexistence. Just look at the war in Ukraine. If you live together with other people, conflicts will arise. Even in the classroom. As a teacher, you cannot avoid such conflicts, but you can use them as learning opportunities: how do you deal with conflict?"

"But after the first edition, we noticed that one day was insufficient to capture a complex theme like peace. So we asked Djapo to develop an educational package as a prelude to the day in the Flemish Parliament. The educational material not only had to excite young people around complex questions such as "What is peace?" and "What is conflict?". It also had to be suitable for schools of different ideologies."

"A first version of the students' magazine was tested by the three schools participating in our 2023 Nobel Peace Prize trajectory: the Atheneum Wispelberg, the Koninklijk Atheneum Antwerpen and the Heilig Hart Institute Heverlee. Djapo provided an evaluation form for the pupils and scheduled feedback moments with some teachers. Based on this new input, Sien reworked the magazines and teacher bundles into a generic teaching package on peace. Now also classes that aren't participating in our trajectory, can get started with the package."