Terra Renaissance, a Japanese NGO working in conflict zones across Asia and Africa, empowers high school students to become global peacebuilders by sending them to Uganda, Cambodia, and Thailand, where they partner directly with conflict-affected communities - including former child soldiers - on real-world challenges. Through a year-long PBL curriculum integrating classroom learning with hands-on fieldwork, students develop the knowledge, empathy, and agency to act on global issues.
Two distinct challenges define this project. The first: most Japanese youth view global conflicts as distant, abstract problems with no personal relevance. The second: former child soldiers in Uganda and landmine survivors in Cambodia face serious barriers to livelihood recovery and social reintegration. This program bridges these two realities - turning disengaged students into active allies for communities that need not just aid, but genuine human connection across borders.
This project addresses both challenges through a year-long, curriculum-integrated PBL (Project Based Learning) program. Students spend the first half of the year in workshops learning the roots of global conflict, then travel to countries such as Uganda or Cambodia, to implement student-designed projects alongside conflict-affected communities. This full cycle - from research to on-site implementation - builds civic agency and empathy on both sides.
As the program expands to other schools in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, it is building a growing network of young global peacebuilders. Alumni continue engaging with social issues after graduation - in NGOs, business, education, and policy. In Uganda and Cambodia, student-led projects directly improve livelihoods and support reconciliation. Long-term, this model shows that sustained, curriculum-embedded education can transform youth disengagement into active global citizenship at scale.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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