The Center for Intercultural Dialogue (CID) from FYROM/Macedonia, in collaboration with the pan-European network UNITED for Intercultural Action, organized the UNITED Conference entitled “Merging Social Parallels: Toolkit to Unite”, between the 15th to the 20th of October 2011 in Struga, FYROM/Macedonia.
The conference brought together 70 representatives from different local, national and international organizations as well as governmental institutions from Europe to discuss and promote dialogue and cooperation in multicultural communities.
The Conference aimed to assess the role and challenges for intercultural dialogue in today's Europe and addressed the need of civil society to discuss practices and policies on intercultural dialogue in segregated communities. The participation of civil society organizations (CSOs), and governmental and international institutions provided the opportunity to enhance dialogue among them, which aimed to bring the focus back to building a functional intercultural society. In this context, CID and over 10 other active CSOs and institutions from the country showed examples of facilitating inter-ethnic collaboration of the communities.
The conference engaged a plethora of speakers, activists and volunteers involved in constructing attitudes of diversity appreciation in many plenary discussions, workshops, working group discussions, political cafés, presentations, debates, intercultural activities, an information market, excursions and through an open forum.
A very important guest of the Conference was Mr. Richard Howitt, a Member of the European Parliament, who at the same time is the Reporter for FYROM/Macedonia on the Committee on Foreign Affairs at the European Parliament, who opened the info market during the Conference. Mr. Howitt also emphasized the importance of Human Rights as part of the Toolkit to unite the gap between parallel societies.
Lindita Rexhepi
President of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue