Participatory Visit in France

Participatory Visit in France

17–18 April 2025

Overview

The Participatory Visit in France, held on 17–18 April 2025, brought together 8 participants and associated partners from Germany, Croatia, and France as part of the HarmonyPath project. The visit was designed as a transnational learning and exchange activity, combining experiential learning, peer reflection, and structured feedback.

The visit played a key role in strengthening partners’ shared capacity to design, validate, and implement effective violence prevention and peace promotion strategies for young people.

The main aim of the participatory visit was to enhance partners’ understanding and practical application of peacebuilding and violence-prevention approaches by learning directly from experienced organisations and practitioners in the French context.

The mobility created a space for reflection, dialogue, and collaborative development, ensuring that HarmonyPath tools remain grounded in real-life experiences and diverse European contexts.

The participatory visit aimed to:

• Enable participants to observe and learn from good practices in violence prevention, human rights education, and peacebuilding implemented by experienced organisations;

• Facilitate transnational exchange of knowledge and methodologies among partners from different countries and professional backgrounds;

• Support the co-creation and validation of real-life violence-prevention scenarios through focus groups and interactive exercises, ensuring relevance and sensitivity to young people’s lived experiences;

• Collect qualitative feedback to further refine the Digital Adventures and Violence Prevention Coaching Cards before piloting;

• Strengthen collaboration, shared understanding, and coherence among partners to support effective implementation and long-term sustainability of HarmonyPath results.

The participatory visit contributed significantly to:

• Improving the quality and relevance of project outputs,

• Aligning facilitation approaches across partner countries,

• Reinforcing a shared peacebuilding language and methodology,

• Building trust and long-term cooperation within the partnership.

By combining observation, dialogue, and hands-on validation, the visit ensured that HarmonyPath remains a practice-oriented, youth-centred, and context-sensitive initiative.