We are writing you to announce two very interesting and interconnected
youth projects, one is our Cultures of Peace Online film festival project
running September 2008 – December 2008 and the other is a Youth In Action
(YIA) Intercultural Youth Forum project which we are proposing to hold in
Austria during the summer of 2009. We are now contact potential
participants because it is generally a good idea to plan well in advance
in order to help them to succeed. We also need to determine the
approximate number of people who will participate in the project or
projects for financial reasons as we will be seeking sponsorship from
several different resources, some of them being socially responsible
companies, several foundations and of course the EU.
The first project is our:
Cultures of Peace Online film festival, which will begin in the fall of
2008. The Cultures of Peace" Online Film Festival seeks to virtually
connect teenagers, students, teachers and schools from Europe, the Middle
East, the USA, Africa, Asia, and Latin America in order to create
English-language short films based on Global Issues topics and categories.
Several awards will be given, one for Best Picture, Best Original Idea,
Best Cinematography, and five (5) Best in Category awards. The film
categories are: Celebrating Culture, Economics, Environment, Peacemakers
and Social Justice. Our goal is to bring the award winners to Austria for
a screening of the films and a live awards presentation, you can help us
to achieve our goals by registering for the festival
http://culturesofpeace.ning.com/?xgi=9OJDYvk and spreading the word to as
many people as you know.
Gregory Kennedy-Salemi, the Cultures project coordinator, Beta tested the
idea with 13-16 year old Austrian students
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=28500668
to see what non-native English students could accomplish in 5 hours with
a little instruction and the results were amazing. The students were very
enthusiastic, active, and some created excellent results in a very short
time frame. They also learned a lot about their topics, how to use new
technology and how to improve on their work if they were given more time.
Based on the experiments success the idea for the online film festival was
launched. Participants in our Cultures festival will have almost three
months to complete their films.
The project outline was developed with the help of non-native speaking
English teachers in order to provide teachers and students with a clear
and easy set of instructions. The 95% completed website with detailed
project information and downloadable instructions is located at,
http://culturesofpeace.ning.com/
and if you are interested in participating in the project please register
online as soon as possible via our extremely easy interface at
http://culturesofpeace.ning.com/?xgi=9OJDYvk
Our second proposed project is a follow up to the film festival project:
The Cultures of Peace YIA Youth Forum, which we would like to conduct
during the summer of 2009 in Austria. The idea is to bring several
participants from each of the Cultures film festival participating
countries and from some of our IFOR branches to Austria via the EU YIA
program, and corporate and private sponsorship. During the summer of
2006, Gregory Kennedy-Salemi and other volunteers from IFOR Austria
conducted a successful YIA youth forum bringing Muslim and Christian youth
together to Austria for a “How do you Live, How do I live” Youth Forum.
What occurred during the intensive week of workshops, sports, music and
dancing was truly remarkable as many participants had never spent one week
working so intensely with others from a different religion and culture.
By the end of the week the participants learned a great deal about
themselves and others and many tears flowed upon the departure of the
group. Based on this previous projects success we would like to host
another forum based around the film festival categories of Celebrating
Culture, Economics, Environment, Peacemakers and Social Justice.
Liebe Grusse,
Gregory Kennedy-Salemi Project coordinator
cc: Pete Haemmerleprojectoverview_april_16_2008.doc
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