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AEI-Open Windows News
It's Our
Task
18th
– 30th August 2005
Evaluatory Report
August 18-30, members of
the Arab Educational Institute (AEI) open
windows, attended the intercultural seminar
“It’s our task” held in Lambricht, Germany. This
project is a part of the international exchange
programs: cross- cultural encounter and
interreligious dialogue in Europe and the Middle
East.
There were participants
from Egypt, Ireland, Israel and Palestine.
On the first day, there
were icebreaking activities on knowing one
another's names and the meaning of our names.
The participants were asked to choose someone
from the other group to talk with and to
introduce him or her later.
Discussion meetings and
working groups included topics such as history,
culture, politics, tolerance and religion. The
seminar focused mostly on religious issues. We
were divided into religious groups (Moslem,
Christians, Jewish) in order to give a
presentation and a prayer which could simply
show some important matters and traditions of
each religion. Each presentation was followed by
a dialogue.
There were also visits
and tours to several places of interest in
Frankfurt, such as; a church, a Turkish mosque
and a synagogue in. We also traveled to
Strasburg in France where we visited the “Euro
Corps”, an organization created as a result of
the strong bi-national political union into a
broader European Security and Defense Politics (ESDP).
It has 14 representative nations all over
Europe, and is affiliated to the western EU,
NATO, and UNRWA. After that, we visited the
human rights office in France.
Before the end of the
project, we discussed how we can plan and
develop future projects. We divided into groups
suggesting ideas and proposals for next project,
which will be named “Crossing Borders”.
In general, the seminar
was very interesting and informative for the
following reasons; the organization of the
seminar (discussion meetings and tours),
accommodation, and food. We learned a lot about
the culture and the religion of the other
participants. We felt we were good
representatives of our Palestinian cause in all
of its dimensions. The seminar was rich in
content, activities, trips and fun. Crossing the
borders from Germany to France was really
impressive since it took us only 5 minutes, in
comparison with the situation in Palestinian
where it would take a person several hours to
travel from one region to another.
On the other hand, there were some negatives;
the village where we stayed was too small and a
bit far from the central cities, which meant we
were a bit isolated from interacting with the
German society, culture and daily life. The Euro
Corps & the European Court of Human Rights
weren’t able to provide answers to many of our
questions, such as, "Within your profile, do you
have a place on your agenda for the Palestine/
Israel conflict?"
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