Haiti’s fragile democracy has struggled with a host of political and economic challenges since the fall of the Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986, and elections have often been flash points for hostilities. In 2010, disputes over preliminary presidential election results caused violence to erupt across the country.

Seventeen-year-old Vlado has his eye on the future – going to college, learning English, perhaps even running for local office. His reality now is vocational school and a tiny house where he lives in a Roma settlement outside of Roskovce in eastern Slovakia. The challenge he faces is whether his enthusiasm and ambition will be enough to get him out of the cycle of poverty, exclusion, and violence that plagues this and many other isolated Roma settlements throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

The setting was a hall in Amman, Jordan, packed with more than 500 students from eight universities, members of the community, and a panel of judges representing members of parliament, civil society organizations, university officials and veteran journalists. They were there for the culmination of five weeks of debate practice and training. Over the next four hours, they would watch eight teams debate seven topics ranging from lowering the age of candidacy for parliament to receiving Syrian refugees in Jordan. At the end, only one team would be left standing.

Silvia Gutiérrez has been an active member of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista, MRS) since she joined the party as a pollwatcher for Nicaragua’s 2006 presidential elections. After her bid for city council in her hometown of Managua in 2008 was cut short when her party was denied participation, she decided to improve her leadership and communication skills by attending a training program aimed at getting more young people involved in politics and civic life.