TRANSITION TIMES: Young people in Africa and Ireland are being invited to come up with solutions to eachother's problems, writes Louise Holden

'I don't see why Kenyans, in a Third World country, can live together, and people in Ireland, a First World country, can't live together in harmony," says Victor Ubunyo, a 15-year-old Kenyan student. He is a participant in a revolutionary new education programme, launched today. Peacebuilder brings students from Ireland North and South together with African students to work on projects relating to shared social, technological and educational needs and to seek new solutions to old problems.

"Young people in Ireland are fed up with their parents' junk," says Des McCabe, chief executive of the Training Trust, the organisation behind Peacebuilder. "This project offers them the chance to engage with each other directly instead of through adults, politicians or NGOs."

Endorsed by everyone from Kofi Annan to David Beckham, Peacebuilder is the first project of its kind in Ireland, and there is little in the way of precedent to be found anywhere in the world. Through the medium of the Internet, students will focus on each other's difficulties and attempt to devise solutions that they can put into practice themselves.

The beauty of Peacebuilder is that it involves the co-operation of disparate groups without the endless navel-gazing that "reconciliation" programmes often bring.

Young people on the island of Ireland are disconnected from the baggage their parents carry, Des McCabe believes. In the North they are haunted by problems they didn't create, while in the South many school-goers have simply stopped caring about the Peace Process. For the young, the conflict in the North is a dusty old problem, a blot on their global outlook. Nonetheless, it continues to affect all lives on this island, in every area from economics to drugs to personal security.

While everyone realises that Ireland's future lies with the young, programmes that bring young people together have had little success. Cross-Border, cross-community forums, which focus on the stubborn problems of sectarianism, inspire polite dialogue that has scant impact on the real lives of young Irish people.

Peacebuilder is different because it shifts the focus away from Ireland. Reconciliation can be a by-product of the process, instead of its primary objective. While Irish students from all communities work together to help find solutions for their counterparts in Africa, African students can bring their experience to bear on the challenges of being Irish in the 21st century. It's a shift in terms of development education too - the African students are equal partners in the programme, instead of silent subjects. This has never been tried anywhere else in the world.

Fifty groups of young people from schools or youth organisations will receive training in web-building and access to software specially designed for Peacebuilder. When all 50 groups have built their websites and linked up with each other, they will be set a series of challenges to prepare them for the link-up to Africa. Support and training resources will also be provided for teachers.

In September 2004 the 50-school web network will be linked with selected groups in Africa. Participants there will include street-children, AIDS orphans and other challenged groups as well as "regular" African school students. The groups will get to know each other, identify needs, and develop practical projects to help each other.

What shape these projects will take is entirely up to the students involved. They could involve mini-companies, export/ import arrangements, political lobbying, awareness campaigns, visits to participating countries - the possibilities are limitless. The key to the programme's success is the fact that every project is devised and managed by the students for each other.

Funded by Senator George Mitchell's Northern Ireland Fund for Reconciliation, the Peacebuilder programme will be provided free of charge to 50 participating schools on a first come, first served basis.

Special Peacebuilder awards, signed by celebrities such as Damien Duff, Sting, Michael Owen, Elizabeth Taylor, David Beckham and Helena Bonham Carter, will be presented to all successful projects at the Peacebuilder awards ceremony in December.

Even though Northern Ireland is, per capita, the most researched region in history, its young people have never before been asked their views in this way, just as African school students have never before been asked to focus their wisdom on the Irish question. If Victor Ubunyo's view is anything to go by, Peacebuilder may have a chance of living up to its name.

"We are one body and so the Catholic prayers and the Protestant prayers will all go to the same God," he says. "If I'm going to visit somewhere, and you're going to the same place, why use two separate airplanes?"

The closing date for applications is March 19th.