The Creative Youth Engagement for Pluralism (C-YEP) project held a project planning meeting with the participation of 12 academics from the Jaffna, Eastern, Ruhuna and Sabaragamuwa Universities.

C-YEP is an initiative that capacitates selected university students and academics to raise awareness and positively influence the public discourse about pluralism and inter community relations to
strengthen the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka. It is funded by GIZ. To make the project implementation process more effective, the discussion at the meeting was based on NPC’s previous UNPBF funded Youth Engagement with Transitional Justice for Long-Lasting Peace in Sri Lanka project’s survey findings on whether youth could be a catalyst for reconciliation and how the findings could be linked to design activities for the C-YEP project.

Participating academics contributed to the discussion on how to formulate a design for the collaborative research on terminologies and their impacts on peacebuilding initiatives at ground level.

Academics from the four universities assisted the project team to finalise the plan and to appoint focal points for tasks for the National Level Research Symposium, which will be conducted at the end of the project. The symposium is an opportunity for academics and students to present their research work on a national level platform.