EuroArab – understanding
each other’s challenges
This project forms part of “Beyond Europe – Perspectives for Tomorrow’s World”, AEGEE’s flagship project for the years 2010/2011.
Background:
More than ever before in the history of mankind, do today’s global challenges require the world to come together as a whole to tackle them. Global challenges, including poverty, hunger, diseases, climate change, nuclear proliferation, the strive for resources and violations of human rights, are the obstacles that stand between youth and the right to enjoy life in dignity and with equal opportunities, a right belonging to every citizen of this world.
AEGEE and SFI are deeply convinced that the responsibility for a better world lies primarily upon the young people as leaders of tomorrow. Today our world sees only few efforts where young people from different cultures and world regions come together to work for a common purpose. We are strongly convinced of our ability to change this and shape tomorrow’s world by working together with youth from the Arab world and Europe.
In order to enable and encourage young people from both regions to work together on overcoming global challenges, we are organising “EuroArab – understanding each other’s challenges” – a one year project involving more than 100 young people from Europe and the Arab world.
Aim:
AEGEE, SFI and the Better World Foundation aim at empowering young people in Europe and the Arab world to tackle global challenges.
Project Objectives:
1) Create an educational dialogue with young people from Europe and the Arab world about global challenges and actions undertaken to tackle them.
2) Encourage youth involvement in the collective effort to tackle global challenges.
3) Inspire young people to become successful multipliers in their societies using the knowledge, experience and skills acquired during the course of the project.
4) Enhance intercultural dialogue between youth organisations in Europe and the Arab world through the exchange of best practices, perspectives and approaches.
Planned activities:
- Case study trip to the Arab world – Palestine and Egypt (Bethlehem, Kairo)
- Case study trip to Europe – Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium (Aachen, Köln, Maastricht, Brussels)
- Final event in Turkey (Ankara)
- Volunteering activities
Case Study Trips (CSTs): The aim of both CSTs is to analyse how young people in the Arab world and Europe, respectively, perceive global challenges and which initiatives exist to tackle them. Furthermore, an intensive exchange about NGO and youth work methods will take place between the Arab and European participants and youth NGOs will be visited in order to give the participants a realistic picture of youth work in both regions.
Each event will be attended by 15 Arab and 15 European participants and the programme will be prepared and lead by 2 Arab and 2 European trainers. In order to ensure a maximum involvement of young people, the participants for both events won’t be the same.
Among the great number of activities are field visits to NGOs working with global challenges, street actions to investigate how ordinary people in both regions perceive global challenges, workshops by professionals and academics working in the field and of course different cultural activities.
Final event: The final event serves at the same time as follow-up of the two CSTs and as starting point for new joint initiatives to tackle global challenges. Its objectives are to share the experiences of the CSTs, to exchange working methods, best practice examples and approaches to youth work, to make the participants familiar with the concepts of intercultural learning and non-formal education, to develop guidelines for intercultural cooperation and the guidance of youth NGOs in the two quite different region. Most importantly, young people will be encouraged to develop and engage in follow-up activities and sustainable partnership. Furthermore, a results booklet and movie will be prepared.
Turkey as the meeting point between Arab and European cultures constitutes the perfect venue for this final event.
In order to ensure the achievability of the objectives, 45 participants will attend this event of whom at least 20 attended one of the CST, hence they can give a first-hand insight in the situation concerning global challenges on both sides. 5 experienced facilitators will lead the event.
Volunteering activities: 3 weeks prior to the CSTs, a volunteer from the respective visiting organisation will arrive to the hosting organisation in order to participate in the preparation and organisation of the event. The volunteering activities constitute a great opportunity for intercultural learning and shall enable the volunteers to identify different approaches in youth work and hence facilitate a lasting knowledge transfer between the partners. The knowledge and experience gained during this volunteering activity will then be shared with the fellow participants of the project. A proper follow-up will be ensured and also the volunteer will share his experiences at the final event, so that they can serve as a good starting point for developing the guidelines for intercultural cooperation and the guidance of youth NGOs in the two respective regions.