Hercules Millas, our speaker and a strong project supporter, conquered the hearts of young people with his arguments, criticism and jokes about identity and democracy problems. Participants also enjoyed a basic introduction to Turkish-Greek relations, education and history text-books, communication between Turkish and Greek communities before the earthquakes and the achievements afterwards. They mostly discussed and themselves discovered the power of young people in this issue, and they produced interesting project ideas via creative collage work as well as public achievement techniques.
I would also like to emphasise that, our decisiveness to continue to look for peaceful solution under the difficult conditions, especially under the shadow of the Iraq war, nearby marked this conference even more valuable. All participants together prepared a declaration against this war. This shows how both sides worried for other people. Hence, this showed us that the important point that we are all human before anything else in the world one more. I guess that we (including participants) had good friendships. Sharing experiences and starting to listen each other have opened new views in our minds.
Mailing list of the event “Rebuilding Communication” (in English) for conference participants and speakers:
tr_gr@yahoogroups.com
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Gülümser Çakır
Conference Coordinator, Former President of AEGEE-Sakarya The primary conference on “Rebuilding Communication” between our two nations rightly draws attention to the paramount importance of communication. Our aim is to be a starting point to overcome lack of communication between NGOs, provide them with a platform where they can share their opinions with each other and further this communication event. As you will also read in the reports presented, people find to know each other closer. Therefore, I believe that this has helped them to give up their prejudices about each other. I reflect and feel this since all people who worked for this event and participants proved this challenge. Despite the cold winter weather and different difficulties, participants were together until the end and remembered to be human before anything. I believe, this project became one of the peace bridge bases between Turkish-Greek friendship.
Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe
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Rebuilding Communication