Vjekoslav Saje shares a report about his participation on behalf of URI Europe, for the European Institute for Dialogue, where URI Europe is a founding member.
Muslim Jewish Conference – Connecting Actions Hub
December 12-16, Paris, France
Report by Vjekoslav Saje
Connecting Actions co-organised an event, with the Muslim Jewish Conference, called the Global Hub for Interfaith Cooperation. It took place on December 12-16 at Chateau du Feÿ, near Paris, France.
This was an innovative mixed event, gathering a number of interfaith and intercultural leaders. The event has also included a working session, specifically for our coalition, the European Institute For Dialogue, which was established in June 2018, placing it into a “track 3,” among four different tracks.
Rafael Tyszblat, a mediator, trainer and dialogue facilitator for various contexts from family mediation to interfaith dialogue, is the President of Connecting Actions, and was a main facilitator for this track.
This conference gave us the opportunity to make URI Europe more visible, and to increase our network with a group of talented individuals from various parts of the world who are willing to be a part of a coalition and cooperate on the next level.
We spent the mornings of Thursday, Friday and Saturday working on exchanging information about each other, our organizations, exchanging knowledge and skills, working on the European Institute for Dialogue, and working on potential joint projects. Some of the potential joint projects that URI could launch could be in partnering with AD-ASTRA inter-religious project in schools in Finland, led by teacher Milena Parland.
The conference was a space for building meaningful relationships with participants from other religions and cultures through working, praying, and having fun together.
Click the yellow arrows to scroll through the photos in the slideshow below.
Some of the very fruitful blocks were Pro-action café, Open Space, and some ice-breaker activities, which were also very useful and in the right time.
The main conclusions related to the next steps of the European Institute for Dialogue are to continue:
- Developing our online platform and website
- Funding / grant writing for the Coalition / for joint projects (get a list of potential funders and start reaching out)
- Preparing our next general assembly
- First joint activities / programmes (including the trainings we want to share with each other)
- Designing a logo
- External communication (public manifesto, PR database)
- Internal Procedures / collective answers about our bylaws