OUR Generation: Improving peace through building emotional resilience in children, young people, and key contacts on the island of Ireland

Adverse experiences and trauma are strongly linked to long-term emotional, physical, and social difficulties. In post-conflict regions such as Northern Ireland, young people are especially vulnerable, with rates of mental ill-health exceeding global norms. Resilience is a recognised protective factor that supports recovery, psychological well-being, and peacebuilding. Building resilience fosters emotional health, intergroup understanding, and social cohesion. Addressing adversity effectively requires a trauma-informed, cross-sectoral approach spanning education, community, social care, and justice systems. Such an approach is essential for mitigating the long-term impact of trauma and fostering emotional and social resilience and building peace.

OUR Generation (OG) is a peacebuilding initiative aimed at strengthening emotional resilience and promoting positive intergroup relations among children, young people, and key adults. Using a research-informed, trauma-informed approach, the project developed scalable interventions to support emotional well-being, reduce conflict, and foster social cohesion across communities in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of Ireland.
A pre/post between-groups design was used to assess the impact of OG programmes on key psychosocial indicators of resilience and peacebuilding: empathy, intergroup trust, mental health and well-being, perspective-taking, outgroup attitudes, intergroup contact, and coping/problem-solving. The sample included 3,044 children (≤11 years), 15,771 young people (≥12 years), and 1,412 key contacts (≥18 years), across 10 emotional resilience and peacebuilding programmes. Participants completed pre- and post-intervention measures following programme engagement.

Significant improvements were observed across six of the seven project indicators. Participants reported better emotional well-being, enhanced coping and problem-solving, and higher levels of empathy and perspective-taking. Improvements in intergroup trust and intergroup contact further highlighted the peacebuilding potential of the interventions.

OG Findings underscore the critical importance of trauma-informed peacebuilding approaches in fostering psychological resilience among children and young people. The evidence further emphasises the necessity to scale-up and evaluate their impact across diverse international contexts.