NEAG's Focus

An important aspect of our work is the international exchange of proven methods for non violent conflict resolution.

A good example is given by the LOW-project (‘Local ownership and skills for conflict resolution and intercultural dialogue’), which we carried out with the German Institut für angewandte Kulturforschung (IFAK) and the Norwegian Fredslag. The final event was a program in Amsterdam with visits to two Moroccan immigrant initiatives and to the Women Empowerment Centre in Amsterdam. We also discussed the opportunities for exporting the concept of the Ramadan Festival to Germany and Norway. Finally we participated in a two days basic training Alternatives to Violence (AVP) by Diversity Joy, together with a few young participants from the Netherlands. The AVP project was developed in the US by a Group of Quakers and it has been very succesful with groups of detinees in after uprisings in prisons. The foreign participants were very much interested in organising the AVP-training in their own countries.

By the end of november there will be a week long workshop entitled ‘Citizenship and Conflict Transformation’, carried out by Diversity Joy and targeted at future trainers from the Netherlands and abroad. The program also aims at building bridges between approaches focusing at society building and at peaceful conflict resolution.

This also applies to a new international project called ‘Community Learning: ABCDE’, with partners from Hungary, Poland and Slovakia with Financial support from the European Union.