Member of the Month: July

European Mediterranean Youth Bridge (emyb), Germany, is a platform for young people from Europe and the southern countries of the Mediterranean. Since 9/11 the idea of a dialogue between cultures has been a priority. However, what this dialogue should look like has been left unanswered. The way in which the 'other' side (e.g. the Middle East or Europe) is being portrayed in the media is either full of resentment and prejudices or covered by smoke-screens of cultural relativism. We work for civil and political development in the northern and southern countries. Our special focus is on a better understanding between the Islamic worlds, Israel, the Balkan countries and their neighbouring states in Europe. emyb consists of volunteers who deal with the Islamic world, the Middle East and questions of development cooperation in their work or their studies. Founded in the city of Hamburg in 2004, emyb has become a decentralized-grassroots network spanning across Germany.

Mission and goals

We think that projects of traditional development work can only have limited success as long as they have no stable basis in their societies. Therefore we work with our partner organisations in the southern countries to create this basis.

A society is only as good as its weakest link. Citizens of a country in one way or another influence how their society develops. Development begins with one person, and if supported by the individual, can only work on the macro-level. Of course, frequently political possibilities for participatory processes are limited but this can also change, often slowly through the will of the people who lead the country.

We take small steps with single persons, particularly young people, and provide them with a starting point to develop their own ideas and concepts for their society. An additional goal is to prepare them to take responsibility for their own actions.

An important step for us is to foster the critical dialogue between people and cultures. We hold the firm belief that real enhancement of the existing situation can only evolve from serious questioning of the things humans, societies, countries and religions have in common, and where they differ. Conflicts are inevitable in this process but can, if used in a sensible way, be an opportunity and not a barrier.

Activities and Strategies

The activities of emyb have a strong international perspective and outreach. Since 2005 emyb has organised several workshops and projects in cooperation with a network of partner organisations from countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Latvia and Poland. The core themes we focus our activities on are peace building, conflict resolution, management, human rights, and democracy. Some of our projects consist of an international as well as a national phase. The former is designed to formulate a common concept of implementation, to exchange experiences with the partner organisations involved, to train people with the goal of multiplying as well as other methods and evaluation. Following this, the implementation takes place in the local area of each partner organisation – this is the national phase.

Besides that, different members of emyb have worked as trainers for several development and political organisations in the field of intercultural communication and conflict management.

Additionally, emyb is a member of the following networks:

Eine-Welt-Netzwerk: the One-World-Network in Hamburg is a voluntary association of Hamburg based NGOs who work in the field of development and countries in the southern hemisphere in general.
Anna-Lindh-Foundation (ALF): The ALF is a large network consisting of civil society organisations in the European and Mediterranean countries with its headquarter in Alexandria, Egypt. Its prior focus is the Euro-Mediterranean cultural and political dialogue.
Kooperation im Dialog (Kodial): The cooperation in dialogue is a loose network of the German NGOs emyb, Dialogue Lab, and Eurient, working in the field of the political, social, and cultural Euro-Mediterranean relations.

Our current projects include the following activities. Local democracy for/with youth (locy) started as an idea in 2008 after identifying the need to strengthen youth participation – especially in Arab countries. emyb has found partners in Egypt (Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies), Jordan (Dana and Qadisiyah Local community cooperative Centrum), and Poland (Rozwoju Inicjatyw Społecznych). The idea behind this is to implement youth participation projects in the local communities of the involved organisations. This is coordinated internationally in order to exchange experiences and to provide necessary support. We held a workshop to do this in Berlin in January earlier this year. The outcome was to have a competition of ideas on local youth participation. Currently we are working on designing the local projects.

YoFo (Youth Forum), a conference on youth participation in Arab countries, has been planned for this autumn in Germany. In cooperation with German and international development organisations and foundations, experts and activists, emyb aims to discuss and analyze the problems and the status of youth in Arab countries. The "Neuen Seminar", an advanced training seminar serial for working tools in the field of development for young activists, has been implemented by emyb on a regular basis. Held twice a year the "Neuen Seminar" was designed to provide new emyb-members with tools for projectimplementation such as Public Relations, fundraising and organisational skills. The "Diktatürlich Demokrat", multiplier democracy training based on the Betzavta Method by the ADAM-Institute in Jerusalem is currently on hold due to the application process for funding sources.