Global Grant Project Proposal

 

Primary Area of Focus: Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention
Secondary Alignment: Disease Prevention and Treatment; Basic Education and Literacy

 

This project should not be presented simply as a mental health project. It should be framed as a community-based youth peacebuilding and conflict-prevention project that uses psychosocial support as its method.

 

The target group, refugee and displaced adolescents aged 14 to 18, are not only experiencing trauma. They are also living in a fragile conflict environment where frustration, loss of hope, displacement, disrupted education, online exposure, economic insecurity, and social isolation may increase vulnerability to recruitment by scammers, trafficking networks, armed actors, criminal groups, and other anti-social organizations.

 

In this sense, psychosocial support becomes a preventive peacebuilding intervention. It helps young people process trauma, reduce grievance, strengthen coping skills, build trusted peer and adult support networks, and develop non-violent pathways for dignity, identity, and future planning.

 

Proposed Duration: One year

Proposed Budget: USD 100,000Proposed Host Sponsor: Rotary Club/District in Thailand
Proposed International Sponsor: Rotary Club of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Proposed Technical/Cooperating Partner: Conflict and Resilience Research Institute Canada, with local refugee-serving partners in Thailand
Primary Rotary Area of Focus: Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention
Secondary Alignment: Disease Prevention and Treatment; Basic Education and Literacy

 

This one-year Rotary Global Grant project proposes a community-based psychosocial resilience and peacebuilding initiative for refugee and displaced adolescents aged 14 to 18 in the Mae Sot refugee/displacement context in Thailand. The project responds to the urgent mental health, trauma, protection, and resilience needs of young people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Myanmar.

 

Although the project includes mental health and psychosocial support activities, its primary purpose is peacebuilding and conflict prevention. Displaced adolescents affected by war, family separation, disrupted education, insecurity, and uncertain futures are especially vulnerable to frustration, grievance, exploitation, trafficking, online scams, recruitment, and anti-social networks. These risks are even more serious for girls and young women, who may experience layered vulnerabilities linked to trauma, gender-based violence, stigma, and limited access to safe support.

 

The project will build a local pool of community-based mental support workers, deliver adolescent psychosocial workshops, strengthen referral pathways, and support a small number of promising trainees for advanced psychosocial support education in Thailand. The project will therefore contribute to Rotary’s Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention Area of Focus by strengthening youth resilience, reducing vulnerability to violence and exploitation, and building local community capacity for sustaining peace.

 

 

Conflict and Resilience Research Institute Canada is currently implementing a Global Affairs Canada-supported project titled Charting a Lasting Peace in Myanmar. As part of this project, CRRIC and its partners visited Bangkok, Thailand from 25 April to 1 May 2026. During this visit, the team met Myanmar young people on 27 April 2026 in a capacity-building workshop.

 

A key message from this engagement was the urgent need for mental health and psychosocial support for young people displaced by the Myanmar conflict. Participants described how trauma, uncertainty, frustration, loss of education, lack of future opportunities, and social isolation are affecting adolescents and youth. They also highlighted that vulnerable young people are increasingly targeted by online scam networks, predatory recruiters, trafficking actors, criminal groups, and other anti-social organizations.

This feedback suggests that psychosocial support should not be treated only as a health concern. In conflict-affected displacement settings, adolescent mental health is directly connected to peacebuilding, protection, violence prevention, and social stability. When young people are left unsupported, trauma and grievance may deepen. When they are supported, they are more likely to develop resilience, trust, social connection, and constructive pathways for the future.

 

This approach is consistent with the UN’s concept of peacebuilding and sustaining peace. UN peacebuilding is not limited to formal negotiations or post-conflict reconstruction. It includes prevention, inclusion, resilience, and strengthening community and individual capacities across the conflict cycle. In this project, psychosocial support becomes a practical peacebuilding tool because it helps reduce vulnerability, strengthens local protective networks, and supports adolescents before frustration and trauma are exploited by harmful actors.

 

 

Overall Goal:
To strengthen psychosocial resilience and peacebuilding capacity among displaced Myanmar adolescents in Mae Sot, Thailand, by building community-based support systems that reduce vulnerability to trauma, exploitation, recruitment, and social harm.

 

 

 

The project will begin with a short community assessment involving adolescents, parents, teachers, youth leaders, women’s representatives, camp/community leaders, local NGOs, and health/protection actors. This phase will map psychosocial needs, trauma indicators, gender-specific risks, recruitment and exploitation risks, existing community support systems, and referral gaps.

 

The assessment will ensure that the project is rooted in actual community needs and does not impose an outside model. It will also help shape the workshop curriculum, training content, safeguarding protocol, and referral mechanism.

 

Approximately 50 community-based mental support workers will be selected and trained. These individuals will not be presented as clinical experts. Rather, they will become first-line psychosocial and peacebuilding support workers who can listen safely, identify distress, facilitate group discussions, recognize risk signs, and refer serious cases to qualified professionals or partner organizations.

 

Training modules may include:

 

The trained support workers, with supervision from qualified professionals and project partners, will help deliver approximately 20 workshops for adolescents aged 14 to 18.

The workshops will create safe spaces where adolescents can discuss stress, trauma, fear, anger, uncertainty, identity, grievance, online risks, gendered vulnerability, and future planning. Activities will include psychosocial education, peer-support exercises, creative expression, resilience-building, non-violent communication, trust-building, and information on where to seek help.

 

Some sessions will be designed specifically for girls and young women, recognizing their heightened risks in displacement settings.

 

 

At the end of the training and workshop cycle, four to five high-performing support workers will be selected for advanced study in Thailand through short courses, certificate programs, or university-linked training in psychosocial support, counselling, youth protection, community mental health, or peacebuilding practice.

This will create a small but durable local cadre of psychosocial peacebuilding resource persons who can continue supporting adolescents after the grant period.

 

By the end of the project, the following results are expected:

 

This project fits Rotary’s Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention Area of Focus because it addresses the conditions that make displaced young people vulnerable to violence, exploitation, and harmful recruitment. It does not wait until adolescents are already recruited, trafficked, radicalized, or harmed. Instead, it works upstream by strengthening resilience, trusted relationships, local support systems, and peaceful coping pathways.

 

The project reflects a preventive peacebuilding logic:

 

 

In this way, the project connects mental health with peacebuilding, youth protection, and conflict prevention.

 

 

The project’s sustainability comes from local capacity-building. Rather than relying only on outside experts, the project will train 50 community-based support workers and invest further in four to five promising individuals for advanced training. Training materials, workshop modules, referral protocols, and safeguarding tools will remain with local partners.

 

The project also complements CRRIC’s broader Charting a Lasting Peace in Myanmar initiative, especially its health, education, and peacebuilding dimensions. While CRRIC’s larger project is focused on long-term research and policy planning, this Rotary project will offer direct community-level support to displaced young people.

 

 

 

The project will be jointly sponsored by a Rotary club or district in Thailand as the host sponsor and the Rotary Club of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as the international sponsor. Implementation will involve local refugee-serving organizations, youth and women’s groups, camp/community representatives, qualified psychosocial professionals, and academic or training institutions in Thailand.

 

CRRIC may serve as a technical and knowledge partner, supporting the needs assessment, curriculum design, monitoring framework, documentation, and linkage with the broader Charting a Lasting Peace in Myanmar project.

Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention as the primary Rotary theme, with a clear statement that psychosocial support is the method through which the project advances youth resilience, violence prevention, social cohesion, and protection from harmful recruitment.