Restore Trust, Rebuild Bridges Initiative

Inspired by the joint call for action with the UN Alliance, the Anna Lindh Foundation launched and supported a series of initiatives aimed at promoting a culture of coexistence and peace in the Euro-Mediterranean region, including a grant scheme for local and regional actions that took place around the International Day of Peace (September 21) 2009. What emerged around that particular call was initiatives such as "To be a day, to be peace", a youth action for the promotion of peace and understanding in a local Bulgarian community with a mixed ethnic composition. It included a parade and a "Festival of Peace" for children and young people from different ethnic groups on the occasion of the International Day of Peace. Similarly, Turkish and Greek musicians performed together in a joint concert on the September 21 occasion. Common songs from Greek and Turkish cultures were played in order to emphasise the similarities and the bonds between the two cultures and their music, therefore promoting a renewed sense of positive neighbourhood values between the two communities.

Information and communication technology (ICT) figured prominently in many of the actions undertaken as part of the initiative. For example, in Israel, "Building Bridges through Marathon Video Making" was an action focused on media as tool for the promotion of peace and coexistence. Palestinian, Israeli, and Danish youth participated in a training in new media creation and intercultural dialogue and then applied their newly acquired skills to capture their interviews with citizens of Jerusalem about their stories of the post-Gaza situation and perspectives for a more peaceful future. And in July 2009, a Euromed Bloggers Training on Intercultural Dialogue was held in Luxembourg; the 18 bloggers launched a one-shot online campaign for restoring trust and rebuilding bridges. (The video below emerged from that experience).

Click here for a list and short descriptions of all the initiatives carried out as part of this initiative; click here for an interactive actions map.

As part of Restore Trust, Rebuild Bridges, in September 2009 Israel welcomed a delegation composed of civil society leaders and artistic activists from the Euro-Med network of the Anna Lindh Foundation. The delegation included representatives from Tunisia and Morocco. These "On the Border" events were held on the border between Bat Yam and Jaffa. The events included an academic roundtable on Mediterranean identities organised by the Bat Yam Urban Mediterranean Institute and the Van Leer Institute and a series of artistic events (e.g., video art installations, a 'Polaroid station', and a concert). Other joint local actions that took place during that exchange in the framework of Restore Trust, Rebuild Bridges were the following (among others): the performance of "Return to Haifa", a play produced and performed in Hebrew and Arabic by a mixed Jewish-Arab theatre group; "Goals of Peace Summer Camp", a co-existence programme for Israeli (Jewish and Arab) and Palestinian children; the "Messengers of reconciliation", an initiative consisting in a series of encounters for students from both Israeli and Palestinian communities, aiming at giving them a chance to discover the human face of "the other".

Conflict.

The Anna Lindh Foundation, which was launched in 2005, is shared and resourced by the 43 countries of Union for Mediterranean, of which Israel is a founding member, and runs the largest EuroMed network of over 3,000 NGOs, academic institutions and civil society groups, including an Israeli national network coordinated by the Van Leer Institute.