Our summer academy for intercultural dialogue was recognized as an exemplary project in the “Active for Democracy and Tolerance” competition organized by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education and the Alliance for Democracy and Tolerance. Project coordinator Atran Youkhana accepted the award at the event in Mannheim.
The Summer Academy promotes young people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Palestine, Kurdistan-Iraq and Germany as multipliers for peace, tolerance and reconciliation.
Each year, the two weeks in August are filled with an intensive exchange program. The 25 young women and men aged 18-26 learn from and with each other how to live together in diversity and how to remain in dialogue despite all differences. In interreligious impulses, they look for common ground and practice changing perspectives.
In workshops and seminars, they explore the question of how collective traumas shape their identities and societies and how a good culture of remembrance can contribute to reconciliation. After their return, they work to promote dialogue and peaceful coexistence in their countries of origin.
“At the Summer Academy, I learned that there is always more than one truth and that it is not good to generalize assumptions about one’s own culture,” says Ermina from Bosnia, summing up her experience. “I’m taking this home with me.”
