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  • Young People Blurring Borders

    YOUNG PEOPLE BLURRING BORDERS
    By Beatriz Bissio

    Inter Press Service
    http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51643
    May 30 2010

    RIO DE JANEIRO, May 30, 2010 (IPS) - Incorporating young people into
    the task of fostering understanding between people of various cultural
    and religious backgrounds is one of the four priority areas of the
    Alliance of Civilisations.

    The important role played by young people in achieving peaceful
    cross-cultural coexistence was recognised by prizes for innovative
    youth initiatives at the Third Global Forum of the United Nations
    Alliance of Civilisations held May 27-29 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    "We must foster young people's creative capacity to build bridges and
    promote a multicultural society," former Portuguese president Jorge
    Sampaio (1996-2006), who is U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's High
    Representative for the Alliance of Civilisations, told IPS.

    "The prizes we granted them at this third forum was the Alliance's
    way of helping to make them more visible, so they can serve as
    encouragement for other young people to get involved in new projects,"
    he said.

    Besides the focus on youth, the Alliance of Civilisation's other main
    areas of implementation are education, the media and migration.

    The Alliance of Civilisations, created in 2005 at the initiative
    of the governments of Spain and Turkey under the auspices of the
    United Nations, works to improve understanding and cooperation across
    nations, cultures and religions in order to counter the forces that
    fuel polarisation and extremism.

    One of the award-winning youth projects was Akili Dada, which
    facilitates access to education by bright girls from poor families
    in Kenya who have stood out for their leadership potential.

    Of the girls who made up the first group of beneficiaries, eight have
    graduated from university, Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, the young Kenyan
    woman who founded and heads the programme, explained to IPS at the
    Alliance of Civilisations forum, whose theme was Bridging Cultures,
    Building Peace.

    Kamau-Rutenberg said it was an immense joy to see girls who could
    not even have finished primary school go on to become professionals,
    with the help of Akili Dada.

    Another prize-winning programme was Forgotten Diaries led by Anush
    Hayrapetyan, a young Armenian woman who lives in the northern Italian
    city of Milan, where the organisation is based.

    The focus of the initiative is to draw attention to "forgotten
    conflicts" -- armed conflicts that have received little coverage by
    the mainstream media, like the civil war in Colombia.

    The Forgotten Diaries web site explains that the aim of the project is
    "to continue the long-standing tradition of young people keeping a
    diary of their lives and their struggles in conflicts," such as Anne
    Frank and Zlata Filipovic.

    Children and adolescents in conflict areas are invited to keep diaries,
    talk about the experiences of their families and incidents in their
    lives, and describe the effects of armed conflict on their lives
    and dreams.

    The youngsters receive training on the use of the internet, online
    social networks and blogs. "This way, we can reach public opinion
    by means of intense, original testimonies that have a greater impact
    than a newspaper article," Hayrapetyan commented to IPS.

    Forgotten Diaries has projects in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, the
    Caucasus, Turkey and Kurdistan, Sarajevo in Bosnia, and other areas
    in the former Yugoslavia.

    "RandomKid: The Power of Anyone" was another of the prize-winning
    projects. In this case, the aim is to encourage youngsters to help
    come up with solutions to concrete problems.

    The idea emerged in the United States in 2005, when then 10-year-old
    Talia Leman explained her plan: urging kids to ask for loose change,
    rather than just candy, while trick-or-treating on Halloween, to
    collect money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Anne Ginther,
    cofounder of the organisation, told IPS.

    Through a web site that they set up, Leman made contact with children
    in 4,000 school districts across the United States, and 10 million
    dollars in donations were raised.

    The ABC television network put the story on prime time news, reporting
    that only five U.S. corporations gave more than what was raised by
    the schoolchildren, said Ginther, who also works with the Catholic
    Church on projects involving disabled children.

    RandomKid has orchestrated the efforts of more than 12 million children
    and teenagers from 20 countries, who have helped build schools and
    wells and expand health care in their communities.

    Other initiatives focus on forming young leaders and journalists
    committed to fomenting social and cultural inclusion.

    In the Undergraduate ParliaMentors programme, run by the London-based
    Three Faith Forum, university students with an interest in politics
    spend time with members of parliament who discuss with them the issues
    they are working on and foreign policy matters.

    Many of the students are from families of immigrants. After their
    mentoring period with the MPs, each team -- trios of Muslim, Christian
    and Jewish students -- presents a concrete project to be carried out
    in a poor community in Britain.

    The director of the Three Faiths Forum, Stephen Shashoua, told IPS
    that the interaction among the youth themselves and with the political
    leaders, added to the work in needy areas, enables young people with
    leadership potential to gain a broader vision of the various cultures,
    and to promote actions that foster inclusion.

    The Euro-Mediterranean Academy for Young Journalists (EMAJ) was
    founded in Berlin in 2007 with the aim of combating the spread of
    stereotypes by the media about "the West" and "the Arab world".

    Through training of young reporters on both sides of the Mediterranean
    sea, EMAJ helps create solidarity networks to bridge the gap of
    understanding. (END)




    From: A. Papazian
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