Forgotten Diaries aims to raise awareness of the under-reported “forgotten” conflicts around the world and to provide young people living in these conflict areas with the skills and tools they need for community development and peace building projects. It also empowers young people to make their voices heard as citizen journalists by reporting on their daily life via a special platform. We believe that young people, if empowered, hold the key to effective community development and building a culture and attitude of lasting peace and non-violence within communities that have been torn apart by war and violence. We have demonstrated this through supporting young people to do just this and seeing very real results.
FD’s website provides an interactive platform for project participants to share their stories with a global audience and with each other. FD has established a network of 30+ youth bloggers working akin to ‘citizen journalists’ in forgotten conflict zones reporting about their lives and countries regularly. The members of this network not only support each other by sharing ideas on implementing community peace building projects but also interact online with visitors from the rest of the world raising awareness on the nature of their “forgotten conflicts”. FD has supported the successful implementation of 13 youth-led peace building projects educating youth about non-violence, human rights and peace which have benefited thousands of local young people. The success of these initiatives inspired the FD team to develop a mini-documentary describing their efforts.
The World Summit Youth Award helped Forgotten Diaries in many ways. Firstly the training and networking showed the FD-team how they could further leverage online tools to improve the effectiveness of FD’s site – and since then FD have re-launched an enhanced website. Secondly, the networking helped FD’s team learn from other best practice online non-profits on how to grow, be more effective and engage audiences which FD have been working hard to implement in their projects. Thirdly, the official recognition has supported FD in increasing awareness of its core message, particularly with policy makers!
Forgotten Diaries is the first project of this kind. FD was started in 2008 and is run by a dedicated team of young volunteers (as part of the organization Youth Action for Change) from around the world. FD has already received tens of thousands of visits and won praise from organizations including the Pulitzer Centre, Oxfam, Microsoft and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and won several awards beside the World Youth Summit Award such as the World Aware Education Award.