World Peace Initiative Foundation - Resonant Africa

Ambassador: Mensah Philippe Houinsou , Benin

Philippe teaches young people about the benefits of mindfulness and meditation through his work with the World Peace Initiative Foundation. His work has impacted 8,000 people in 27 countries across Africa. Working with his team, Philippe conducts workshops to help people better manage their emotions, enabling them to become better communicators, and to have more productive relationships with their colleagues, friends, and families. Participants are given the opportunity to look at things from a different perspective, improving their social awareness and increasing consciousness of how their own actions can impact others. Philippe is a certified mindfulness and meditation trainer, having completed a meditation fellowship in Thailand in 2015. Two years later, he got certified emotional intelligence practitioner by Six Seconds, the emotional intelligence network. He uses his learnings to help improve the emotional intelligence of participants so that they can build on their conflict resolution skills. Trainings have been conducted in Benin, Niger, Mali, The Gambia, DR Congo, Chad, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde and South Africa, amongst others.

After attending the One Young World 2018 The Hague Summit, Philippe was inspired to further scale his work. He has set up a new organisation by the name of Resonant Africa which focuses on building the Emotional Intelligence (EQ) as well as socioemotional skills of young Africans. The organisation implements three projects including “EQ in Schools”, which strives to make emotional intelligence and social emotional learning a part of the school curriculum. This approach is currently being piloted in one school in Benin, with plans to roll out the project to the whole country and beyond in the coming months. Resonant Africa also promotes the UN sustainable development agenda and provides trainings and workshops to develop the leadership potential of young African people.