Source: Provincial Council of Barcelona

Peace education is one of the most significant tools that municipalities have at their disposal to foster peace at local level, but harnessing its transformative potential can be a challenge.

It is with this goal in mind that the Development Office of the Province of Barcelona, in collaboration with other municipalities and the NGO Fundipau, has drawn up a self-evaluation checklist for peace education.

The checklist allows practitioners and policy-makers to self-assess their peace education practices against four criteria aimed at transformative peace education:

• Creating empathy
• Demonstrating local-global connections
• Creating a sense of shared responsibility and
• Raising awareness of our capacity to make change

The checklist is particularly focused on educational work with children and young people in schools, though it can also be applied to other contexts.

The checklist was one of the outcomes of a recent meeting of the Education for Global Citizenship Work and Exchange Group, which is convened by the Province of Barcelona to support municipal development cooperation staff in their work.

Development cooperation staff from the following municipalities participated in the session

Castelldefels; Cornellà de Llobregat; El Prat de Llobregat; Granollers; Manresa; Mataró; Sabadell; Santa Coloma de Gramenet; Sant Boi de Llobregat; Sant Cugat del Vallés; Sant Pere de Ribes; Sant Vicenç dels Horts; Terrassa; Vic; Vilafranca del Penedès, and Vilanova i la Geltrú.