Building lasting peace from within — training refugee youth as Peace Ambassadors, forming Zonal Peace Clubs, and conducting structured community dialogues that equip communities to identify, prevent, and resolve conflict themselves.
Conflict in Rhino Camp and Imvepi refugee settlements is not a distant risk. It is a present reality — shaped by competition over food, land, and livelihoods, by the trauma that thousands of residents carry from the conflicts they fled, and by the daily pressures of living in dense, under-resourced communities alongside neighbours from different ethnic and national backgrounds. When tensions escalate, it is rarely a single incident that is responsible. It is the accumulation of unresolved grievances, the absence of trusted spaces for dialogue, and the lack of trained community members who know how to intervene before violence takes hold.
YSAT's Peace Clubs and Community Dialogues programme addresses this directly. Rather than responding to conflict after it happens, the programme invests in the community's own capacity to prevent it. Eleven Zonal Peace Clubs were formed across Rhino Camp and Imvepi, each anchored by trained Peace Ambassadors — refugee youth equipped with the skills, tools, and visibility to identify tensions early, facilitate dialogue between conflicting parties, and connect community members to referral systems when needed.
The programme also integrates intergenerational collaboration, recognising that youth-led peacebuilding is most effective when it works alongside — not in opposition to — community elders and established leadership structures. Training sessions, peace dialogues, and football-based social cohesion activities brought together youth, elders, refugees, and host community members in shared spaces, building the relational foundation that lasting peace requires.
116 Peace Ambassadors were equipped with skills to identify, prevent, and resolve community-level conflicts. Training covered conflict resolution, reconciliation, and peacebuilding approaches. Ambassadors also received assorted visibility materials, bicycles for mobility, bags, and other essential items to support their work across the settlement zones.
11 Zonal Peace Clubs were formed across Rhino Camp and Imvepi settlements. Zonal action planning sessions were conducted in both settlements, giving each club a structured mandate and a clear framework for ongoing community-level peacebuilding. The clubs serve as permanent community infrastructure for conflict prevention — continuing their work beyond any single project cycle.
6 community peace dialogues were conducted in the zones of Omugo and Eden to mitigate conflicts and promote peaceful coexistence among refugees and between refugees and host communities. A cumulative total of 436 community members (236 female, 200 male) participated, including 370 reached through dialogue and social cohesion activities and 335 refugees alongside 35 host community members.
105 youth and community elders were reached through training on conflict resolution, reconciliation, and peacebuilding. The intergenerational design was deliberate — bringing together young people and established community leaders to build shared understanding, strengthen mutual respect, and create the kind of cross-generational trust that makes community-level peace durable.
YSAT supported football activities to promote social cohesion among refugees and host community members, including elderly men and women. A total of 370 participants took part, of which 335 were refugees and 35 were host community members. Sport was used as a shared language — creating positive contact between communities that daily life often keeps separate, and reinforcing the relational bonds that dialogues alone cannot build.
Zonal action planning sessions were conducted in Rhino Camp and Imvepi to give each Peace Club a clear operational plan. Under the INSPIRE project, 26 Peace Champions were additionally trained, deepening the settlement's peacebuilding capacity and creating a tier of advanced practitioners who support and mentor the wider network of Peace Ambassadors.
Peace Ambassadors equipped with conflict resolution skills
Zonal Peace Clubs formed in Rhino Camp and Imvepi
Community members reached through 6 peace dialogues
Youth and community elders trained in conflict resolution