September 9, 2019 – Last month, the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI) and BNP Paribas launched a new branch of the Youth Peacemaker Network (YPN) in the Cape Flats neighborhood of Cape Town, South Africa. Under the partnership, WPDI will extensively train 360 young leaders from the most vulnerable areas of Cape Flats, helping foster peacebuilding and sustainable development there.
Since 2012, WPDI has been working extensively to promote peace and sustainable development in some of the most violent and vulnerable places around the world, including in South Sudan, Mexico, and Uganda. The YPN is our flagship program and, at its core, rests upon a fundamental idea: we must empower young people to act as the drivers of positive, transformative change. By working with youths in places impacted by conflict and violence – young people who are often perceived as a problem or burden by others – we help them become the solutions to the needs of their communities. The YPN model has helped WPDI reach more than 300,000 people since its inception, resulting in widespread successes, and now, together with BNP Paribas, we plan to do the same in Cape Flats. Cape Flats itself is crippled by poverty and violence. In recent months, the number of homicides there reached such a level that South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, deployed the military to help police clamp down on violence. This approach, while necessary, cannot address the root causes of the violence, which include high rates of youth unemployment, disenfranchisement, and marginalization.
With that in mind, WPDI’s YPN program aims to train 360 youths from Cape Flats with the skills they will need to become peacebuilders and ambassadors for sustainable development within their community. As Dr. Chance Chagunda, WPDI’s program manager in South Africa, explained during the first training workshop, which introduced the youths to the principles of Conflict Resolution Education, Life Skills, and Business and Entrepreneurship, “Peace is much more than the absence of violence, but rather the sum total of attitudes, structures, and institutions that underpin sustainable development. We believe that, with the right support, young South Africans can be drivers of positive change.”
Once WPDI has trained these youths, they will lead educational initiatives, mediate conflicts, and create job creation projects for city residents. The entire initiative will be hosted at WPDI’s new Community Learning Center in Athlone, at which WPDI will provide free educational courses in topics including Conflict Resolution Education, Information and Communications Technology, and Business and Entrepreneurship for members of the public in addition to Internet access and literary tools. Our Business Bootcamp initiative, a business incubator designed to help foster local entrepreneurship, will also be hosted at the center.
None of this would be possible without the strong support of our partners in South Africa, BNP Paribas and its retail subsidiary, RCS. As Vikas Khandelwal, the CEO of BNP Paribas Group South Africa noted at the official launch of our YPN in Cape Flats, “Accelerating the UN SDGs at the local level requires collaboration from a range of sectors and organizations, as sustainable economies are underpinned by sustainable communities. We are proud to support programs that promote social cohesion, equality, and inclusiveness, and our partnership with WPDI is an example of how educational empowerment can head to concrete and positive social impact. Regan Adams, the CEO of RCS, concurred and explained how a “commitment to entrepreneurship and the importance of empowering youths are the key drivers of this initiative. As a business, we believe in the power of these factors in driving social change and we are excited to support WPDI in advancing sustainable communities.”
Around the world, it is clearer than ever that young people must be at the epicenter of any successful initiative designed to address seemingly unfathomable challenges. That is especially true in vulnerable places like Cape Flats. Over the next five years, WPDI and its partners will work to nurture thousands of youths there, and together, we will plant seeds of peace within the community.
