Euro Arab friendship and dialogue at Roverway

"10 Arab and 7 European Scouts have shared their cultures and ideas during 4 days at  Roverway! Better understanding each other, contributing to the post 2015 Millennium Development Goals process and creating new friendships were the agenda of this Euro-Arab workshop which gathered participants from Libya, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirate, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Kuwait, France, UK, Croatia, Finland, Greece and Italy. Based on the Scout Method, the participants to the workshop were the main actors of their learning process and have exchanged through games, debates and working groups.

During the four days, the participants shared about their cultures and values, identified their differences and common values and tried to overcome prejudices. First to develop the conditions of this dialogue, and to help participants to define their own culture, the workshop began with an intercultural role game. During this game, the participants experienced all together the difficulties of communication, the lack of self-confidence and the cultural misunderstandings. They succeeded to overcome them and then to use those understanding throughout the whole workshop!

With Arab participants from Christian and Muslim backgrounds, and Europeans from Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox backgrounds, the group, through its own components was an invitation to go further in interfaith dialogue. Through games but also by sharing their religious practices with Ramadan, Catholic mass and Jewish prayer, the participants discovered that they finally share a lot of common values and practices. For some European participants, the main surprise was to discover that in some Arab countries, you can find 50% Christians (Lebanon). During the last night, and as a natural conclusion of the workshop, the participants celebrated both the Ramadan break of the fast and the Shabbat meal with the Jewish Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs Israelites de France." You will find the article in full-text here.