ONE WORLD CAFE
Start date: Feb 1, 2015,
End date: Nov 30, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
In March 2015, during an international youth meeting in southern Siberia, around 50 predominantly disadvantaged participants from Germany and Russia constructed a mobile ‘One World Café’, which consisted of a small, transportable log-cabin, a Yurt, and four ???tachten (Tea- Sofas). The café will serve to promote contacts between young people from diverse national and ideological backgrounds over the course of subsequent follow-up projects.
As a result of travelling through the countryside and between towns in the region and visiting local festivals, the café provided a space for personal encounters, music, film screenings, and in particular for discussions and workshops focusing on sustainable development and peaceful social cooperation. During the project, participants engaged in intensive communication where they reflected upon thier cultural similarities and differences as well as the contemporary political situation in their respective home countries.
The project enabled diverse points of contact and engagement with young people in the region and with local youth initiatives. This has proved particularly valuable for the follow-up project in summer, where young people from five European countries (including the Ukraine) toured through the countryside, visiting four villages in the Kuraginoer region. The participants were involved in planning the project and played a substantial role in the decision-making process. Furthermore, they carried out various tasks requiring personal responsibility. Alongside team leaders with pedagogical experience, we engaged young participants with technical and artistic competences and respectively enabled them discover and apply these skills through taking part in the project. Carpenters, joiners, a seamstress, musicians and theatre teachers also contributed to the project.
The project concept was developed during a discussion in a local youth club in Kuragino. Over the course of the project, participants visited numerous youth centres in the region and invited locals and youth workers to music and dance events, which proved to be very popular. An international music group was formed, exiting considerable interest. The contacts established will be of significant importance for the follow-up project in summer, and they have provided a basis for consolidating relationships with the community in the future. Moreover, the interest and engagement of a number of community leaders will facilitate new opportunities for collaboration in the region.
Following the project’s completion, the mobile Café will continue to serve as a resource for local and international youth work. It will travel to festivals, where it will present a model of sustainable and self-sufficient economic organisation. Correspondingly, the Café will offer a resource for youth projects to self-fund locally. The broader dynamic that has been set in motion by the ‘Mobile Moneyless Culture Café’ will carry over into several important follow-up projects in the Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Russia and the Crimean peninsula. Numerous collaborators are hoping to continue and develop the project through 2017.