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Salaam-Shalom Interfaith Learning
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Salaam-Shalom Interfaith Learning is a project meant to bring together people of different faiths, with special focus on the Jewish-Muslim relations in Europe. Violence and wars around the world can create a segregation between these two communities, and media can help spread this fear by reporting on the rise of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Europe. Rather than treat these two forms of discrimination separately, Salaam-Shalom aims to look at their similar roots and hold debates and discussions about this commonality. Experts from NGOs across Europe, including countries most affected by the tension of these interfaith relations (France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark) can share their practices in the youth work they have been doing to integrate people of different backgrounds and create a space where everyone belongs. The meeting of the youth and youth workers will include include a space for self-expression through slam poetry, as well as a film night with a discussion and a debate. There will also be a film created and shared on a Salaam-Shalom website, which will highlight the concerns and challenges of such an approach but also show its ultimate long-term benefits. While there are many projects now working on "fighting" discrimination in a sub-community, this project takes a different approach, because it sets in place a group that can be role models for each faith's community. This group can continue to be active in the face of stories in the media that spread fear in order to show that our reality also includes those who very much wish to live and work together peacefully. The film about this project will be spread through social networks and the website to reach as broad an audience as possible.The project will bring together 16 youth workers from France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark (4 from each country) to first share their strategies in working with young people on issues of discrimination and diversity. These strategies will be used as inspiration for each partner organization to go back to their countries and organize at-least two Salaam-Shalom events. These will include leaders and members of the Jewish and Muslim communities, along with other faiths. Each partner organization will have its own strategy to implement during this event, but all will include discussion with a larger, diverse audience. This is to give the audience a chance to participate and join the Salaam-Shalom initiative. The partners will then come together again for a training and implement some of these strategies. The amount of people indirectly affected by this project will be at-least 200. The concrete outputs for this project are a website and a film. The website will consist of the documentation of meetings and events from all the partners' local activities, as well as the joint activity in Copenhagen. The film will be a documentation of some of the challenges of living in Denmark (in terms of inter-faith relations) and what the Salaam-Shalom project is doing about it. It is expected that this film will be shown in each participating country, as well as picked up by other EU channels to share the importance of inter-faith dialogue. If there is another unfortunate incident, similar to Charlie Hebdo, or even smaller offenses based on discrimination of one person's culture or religion, the group can rise up in solidarity and prevent the divisive reactions that often take place after such events. This is the long-term benefit of the project - to put in place a group that shows there is a way to work that is based on solidarity and unity, even when least expected.

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