PEACE – Pact for Education, Active Citizenship and Engagement
Irish Rural Link is one of 8 partners across 5 EU countries on a new Erasmus+ funded project- PEACE – Pact for Education, Active Citizenship and Engagement, an EU-wide initiative designed to support small municipalities in fostering social inclusion, equality, and democratic participation. The project is a 30-month initiative that began in November 2025 and will run until May 2028. Partners in the project are from Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, and Slovakia.
Project Summary:
The project aims to enable even small municipalities across Europe to play a significant role in promoting peaceful, inclusive and democratic communities. The project partners recognise the unique challenges and opportunities these municipalities face and aim to provide local authorities and key actors such as civil society organisations, libraries and museums with the tools, knowledge and other information needed to support active citizenship, European values and participation. The study of Learning Cities from the UNESCO Global Civic Education and Inclusion cluster of cities will provide case studies and information on practices related to civic education for peace in communities. This material and other resources will be used to prepare a set of educational and inspirational materials based on the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture, which will be intended mainly for smaller municipalities to take over. An information campaign will be carried out for this.
The project will produce:
- a set of case studies on civic education for peaceful communities –
- a PEACE Reference Framework for municipalities and recommendations (guidelines) for specific measures
- a PEACE Cities Manifesto and guidelines for the sustainability of results
- an educational platform with all these resources.
The project’s ambition is to come up with a practical and up-to-date formulation of the scope of civic education for peace in society within the framework of lifelong learning and to inspire even small municipalities to become PEACE Cities.
To learn more, visit the project website:
