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Albanian Peace and Disarmament Education Manual Toward a Culture of Peace is finally published. The book includes contributions from 11 trained teachers from Gramsh and Shkodra, and has been written by a team of four educators bringing their perspectives to the manual. Of the four educators, two of them, Robert Gjedia and Albana Markja, come from the Institute for Pedagogical Studies, the institution responsible for curricula in Albania. Another writer is Zhuljeta Harasani, the UNESCO coordinator for human rights. The last one is Majlinda Keta, the education director for Tirana, the Albanian capital. Apart from being good writers, these people are strategic partners in promoting peace education. When thinking about including peace education in the schools, the consensus is that it has to be done in a cross-curricular fashion, that is to be infused in all curricula, just like human rights education.
- The manual is divided in these chapters:
- Human security and disarmament
- Human Rights Law and institutions
- Education for peace and conflict resolution
- Education for peace and disarmament in the school
- Inclusion of peace education in the curricula
- Methodology of peace education in the schools
- Trainers of peace education
- Practical Activities
- Practical Activities organized by teachers
- Bibliography
The book is being printed by the end of July. A professional translator is currently translating the whole book into English. Both the Albanian and the English version will be available on the website of our project as well (http://www.cpde.net/downloads/resources-en.php).
As part of the work on the book we are going to organizing a TOT training in the first week of September for thirty teachers. 15 of these teachers are coming from our schools in Gramsh and Shkodra that also contributed to the activities presented in the book. The other 15 teachers come from the Centers for Democratic Citizenship in 5 public universities in Albania that train students who are going to become teachers, and also train other teachers directly.
Youth training and the manual
The project staff have also been training Gramsh and Shkodra youth in peace and disarmament education materials. We have relied mostly on the “Help Increase the Peace” Quaker manual. The themes of the three sessions were: Cooperation and Trust, Conflict Resolution, and Economic Justice. The youth leaders loved the activities and encouraged us to include them in a youth manual.
We will follow up with another training in Tirana in next few months in order to get the core materials for the youth manual. | 
