After years of violence, confrontation and the dialogue of the deaf in Northern Ireland, everybody is now talking. Most famously, the politicians reached the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday. Community groups have started their own formal dialogue. There is more contact between churches, business people, women's and other groups across the community divide in the North, between North and South, and between Britain and Ireland than ever before.

Now the first large-scale project to involve teenagers in the peace process has started. Let's Talk was put together by five organisations involved in development education in Ireland and Britain. It was originally designed by 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World, based in Bray, Co Wicklow. The other groups now involved are the Development Education Centre in Birmingham, the Dublin-based Development Education for Youth, the Speak Your Piece project in Coleraine, Co Derry, and the Sligo-based World Education Project.

After nearly three years of preparation, they held the first of eight major youth conferences in Sligo in March under the title "What do we mean by Peace?" More than 300 15-to-18-year-olds from schools and youth groups in Dublin, Belfast, Birmingham, Derry, Coleraine, Ballymena, Cork, Limerick and Sligo came together for two days to listen to, debate with and, on a number of points, strongly challenge Unionist and SDLP politicians. The organising group - half made up of young people - is particularly keen that the neglected English dimension of the Irish-British quarrel should be examined more closely. This also helps young northerners from a unionist background to feel more comfortable about being involved.

There is a strong emphasis on learning from the experience of other conflicts around the world. The most popular session in Sligo was the international workshop: speakers from Sudan, Kenya and Mozambique spoke of the problems of refugees and racism. Young blacks and Muslims from Birmingham quickly demolished any semi-racist notions Irish participants might have had.

A local theatre group helped the

participants act out "role plays" about racial and sexual harassment and how, humorously and non-violently, to undermine the authority of old-fashioned despots. The conference ended with an uproarious ceili - and the hotel manager publicly complimented the young people on their excellent behaviour!

In September another 300 to 400 young people will gather in Birmingham to debate "Roots of Conflict: Roots of Peace". This time the emphasis will be both on issues of race and Christian-Muslim tension in that city, and on the aftermath of the Belfast Agreement. They will look at the results of a Let's Talk youth mini-referendum on the agreement, and will listen to and debate with speakers from the Australian movement for reconciliation with Aboriginals.

In November the conference will be in Coleraine, under the title "Building a Just and Peaceful Society". The organisers hope it will be addressed by Israeli and Palestinian peace activists Yael Dayan and Sari Nusseibeh, and the UN's Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, Professor Abdelfattah Amor of Tunisia.

Five more conferences are planned for next year. In total, about 3,000 young people will be directly involved, reporting back to at least the same number again in their nine cities and towns. "Until now young people have not been given adequate opportunity to address the issues of peace and reconciliation creatively," says Colm Regan, the project's co-ordinator. At Sligo they were already making clear their intention to create their own "peace agenda" at this crucial moment in the history of relationships between the peoples of these islands.