Cultural Euro Islam exchange

In 2006-2007, four local bodies in AEGEE (Enschede, Canakkale, Passau and Sofia) participate in a multilateral cultural exchange under the topic of Euro Islam.

This exchange has two parts: the first part was in Passau, Germany, in June 2006, and the other will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, in March 2007.

Below you find the project description of the exchange in Passau. You can find the program of the exchange week under Results. More info on the exchange in Sofia will be provided soon.

Motto: Intercultural flat share - Muslim and Christian Europeans united under one roof

Aims:

- to draw an image how Islam is lived by Muslims in Western Europe and how reality mixes it with the life of Christian Europeans

- to stimulate intercultural learning amongst participants

- to encourage personal initiative amongst our participants to talk with persons from the participating countries

Description:

Our participants will be asked to shoot pictures of what Bulgarians and Turks consider to be typically German/Western European and what Dutch and Germans consider to be Turkish/ Muslim.

Simoultaneously they will be split into multicultural groups that each have to solve a treasure hunt corresponding to the thematic focus of each day. The treasure will be a blank piece of paper showing an empty room. This piece of paper will be filled with the content from the pictures, drawings or cutting-outs from magazines etc. At the end of each day, so that in the end of the week we will have several intercultural houses produced by our participants.

The rooms of these houses will be: kitchen (food & eating habits); living room (media); sleeping room (relationships!); childrens room (education), bathroom (body treatment, relaxation); party cellar (feasts & Dances ;-)) and balcony (communication & looking outside over to the neighbours)

Religion will not be treated as a separate element, it will rather be naturally included in each of the above thematic days.

At the beginning/end of some days there will be a short brainstorm within small groups on: how does todays topic appear in the Quran or in the Bible. This brainstorm will be followed up together with experts . Afterwards we will discuss to what extent these elements are still influencing todays real life.

This section aims to increase the participants understanding about the religious background of different cultural habits and to raise their confidence in future discussions about the topic.