Empathy & Sympathy, Peace Education and Role-Playing, Theater of the Oppressed, (m) ASK yourself where they used dance as a mean to express themselves and their prejudices and hopes, changed their roles, wrote the history from the very beginning and made shots and edited them to tell their own story. The Final Conference had one training course on project development and management by the European Commission, one assessment panel by academics and youth organisations participated to the previous project events and ended with a ROAD MAP declaration prepared by conference participants with open space method giving light to the future activities in the field. The Final Conference had a very nice opening ceremony by Embassy of Greece and European Commission Representation in Ankara and ended with another charming ceremony by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey.
INTERVIEW WITH DIMITRIS GEORGOPOULOS
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The project so far published two newsletters distributed to a lot of contacts in both countries providing project information, interviews with academics, artists and participants. In the course of the project an online database of Turkish and Greek youth organisations was prepared providing not only contact information of the NGOs, but also giving information on their aims, past and future activities as well as their views on dialogue of young Turkish and Greek people. The database is available online at the official Project website and included in the Result CD to be distributed together with the project Result Book. So the magic comes to an end…with its outstanding results, many bitter sweet memories, all the friendships and the fights, with its more than 5000 direct participants, AEGEE’s opening up its doors to other youth organisations in Greece and Turkey, NGO FAIR, the power of young people combined with art and culture, its huge budget and all the administrative work, EU tendering procedures, double entry book-keeping systems and financial auditing, project participants still coming together in Athens having so-called ‘Kaya’ meetings with their slides and memories and sharing their lives on mailing lists, the precious people worked a lot voluntarily for its realisation for years… Sophia Kompotiati, who exerted invaluable efforts for the coordination of the project from AEGEE-Athina said “We have once again seen that cooperation in arts and culture can be powerful tools in eliminating prejudices”. www.turkishgreekdialogue.net
www.aegee-ankara.org/trgr trgr@aegee-ankara.org
Introduction
BY MARIA NOMIKOU
Dimitris is a Mechanical Engineer graduated from the National Technical University of Athina (1996) and holds an MBA from the London Business School (2002). He joined AEGEE-Athina in 1991, became member of the Board of AEGEE-Athina (1992 - 1994), became PR Responsible of the Comité Directeur of AEGEE-Europe where he was responsible for the 10th Anniversary Book of AEGEE (1995). He then became President of AEGEE-Athina in 1996 when he initiated the first cultural exchange between AEGEE-Athina & AEGEE-Istanbul. He currently heads the International Expansion of raxevsky, a leading Greek women’s fashion company. 1. If I am not mistaken, in 1992 it was decided that AEGEE’s network would be expanded in Turkey. What was the position of AEGEE-Athina on that? The expansion of AEGEE in Turkey was very hot topic in AEGEE-Athina during the AGORA in Kos that AEGEE-Athina was organising, in 1992. At that time, the board of Athina was really against even discussing that AEGEE could expand to Turkey. So we felt really uncomfortable to know that when we will be hosting the Agora in Kos (right opposite of the Turkish coast) we would be forced to decide whether AEGEE-Istanbul will become a member of AEGEE network or not. The discussion at the plenary session was much tensed and the final decision was that AEGEE-Istanbul could join immediately. The people in Athina thought to quit the AGORA that they had been organising! All the Greeks gathered in a Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe