Young adults aged from 18 to 25 have attended from 18th to 31st July an international campus organised nearby Arezzo by the Italian Association "Rondine - Cittadella della Pace.
The students from the International Hall of Residence of Rondine have taken part in the project along with twenty young Abkhazians and twenty young Georgians with students from some of the most important Italian universities, members of associations and NGOs as well as with other young guests
The initiative was one of the rare opportunities since the conflict in August 2008 for direct contacts between young people coming from the two sides of the Enguri river.
The initiative, funded through the "Confidence Building Early Response Mechanism" - funded by the European Union and managed by the United Nations Development Programme - was implemented in a spirit of real sharing, despite some initial difficulties, also thanking to the active support granted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as by other organisations.
The project, named "Building Bridges", consisted in a residential campus focused on reciprocal exchange and on education, two keywords of the activities carried out by the Italian association. The initiative drew inspiration from the experience of Rondine's International Campus, a place where young people coming from conflict areas are able to live together, carrying on several activities in an environment where cooperation among participants is promoted, in order to spread a culture of peace.
The young participants came together in a context which has revealed ideal for enhancing trust and cooperation. They have attended educational workshops in various fields, aimed at improving their capacity to promote cooperation projects. Some of the subjects they studied were team building and team working, European project financing, gender equality, techniques of journalistic writing, webmastering as well as issues linked to the Environment. The young participants were able to work in small mixed groups, teaming up and confronting each other in order to submit their final reports at the end of the campus. Participants had also the opportunity to visit Florence, Venice and Rome and to share several recreational moments.
