News
11.04.2012
The Victor Pinchuk Foundation and Peres Center for Peace organized an intercultural dialogue between senior high school students of Ukraine, Israel and Palestine
From March 26 to April 1, 2012, with the support of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, 15 high school students from Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Lviv visited Israel to meet with Israeli and Palestinian students in the framework of the Trilateral Youth Exchange initiated by the Peres Center for Peace. The program aims at improving culture of ethnic tolerance among young people, to eliminate cultural barriers and prejudices as well as focus on uniting factors.
The program was launched by the Peres Center in 2008 to engage young people of Germany in cultural exchange and promotion of mutual understanding between Israeli, Palestinian and German students. In 2011, with the assistance of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Ukrainian schoolchildren also joined the project.
To participate in the program, 15 Ukrainian, 10 Israeli and 10 Palestinian high school students were selected. First, the participants met as a group in the Facebook and discussed the issues related to nationality, identity, cultural differences, etc.
During their visit to Israel, Ukrainian and Israeli students took part in joint seminars devoted to cultural diversity and peacekeeping in multinational countries. In addition, students visited historic landmarks of the country, the Holocaust Museum and Peres Center for Peace.
Due to a tense political situation, the Palestinian program participants were not able to join the personal meeting with the young Ukrainians, but they had a chance to meet and talk with the Israeli participants earlier on. All three parties continue communicating in a closed group in the Facebook.
