IRS 2007 - Study Session - "Educational Exchanges Involving People with a Muslim Cultural Background"

After the YFU ETOV on a similar topic (i.e. "New Horizons in promoting Intercultural Understanding through Youth Exchange and Educational Programmes in Dialogue with Islam"), 29 YFU and AFS volunteers from 15 European and Mediterranean countries participated in a Study Session on "Educational Exchanges involving people with a Muslim Cultural Background" in the European Youth Centre in Budapest from 2^nd to 9^th December 2007, which had been organised and held by EEE-YFU and EFIL (‘European Federation for Intercultural Learning’, the European AFS umbrella) jointly. They were also supported by the Council of Europe (DG Youth and Sports) both financially and with staff resources. This Study Session was the first YFU and AFS cooperation in a European level volunteer activity and it was as such highly appreciated by the participants from both organisations.

The Study Session was organised to exchange ideas and experiences and that way learn from each other to bring back new ideas and impulses to the respective national organisations in order to increase and facilitate the inclusion of local (Muslim) minorities as well as exchange programmes with countries with a Muslim majority.
In the first half of the week, the emphasis was placed on getting to know each other, team building and sharing personal experiences on stereotypes, shaping of values, media, etc in small groups and the plenary to prepare for the second half of the Study Session and the week, when the work became more concrete and more practical and applicable.
Open space discussions gave the chance to exchange experiences between the countries and organisations and have a look at the different ways of handling specific problems that might come up in involving people with Muslim cultural background in educational exchanges. More and more concrete ideas and strategies in general came up and were developed over time.
The last day gave every participant the possibility to finalise and specify some of the ideas and to draft personal action plans with concrete small step tasks for the coming weeks and months.
These concrete actions range from putting the exchange with countries mainly of Muslim population on the national agenda, finding ways to attract minority youth to educational exchanges, strengthening existing partnerships, bringing in new partners and developing our organisations to creating a volunteer platform for exchanging experiences and best practices within the subject.
During the week two guest speakers from Denmark, Zoubair Butt Hussein and Rasmus Alenius Boserup spoke about Muslim minorities in Europe (with Denmark as an example) and opportunities and challenges of ‘intercultural dialogue’. They both initiated heated and fruitful discussions.