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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
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