Two golden lines coming from opposite directions like writing from right to left and left to right, approach each other,
and seem to collide but just before collision they both start rising, crossing each other's path and continue
rising together until they spark the light that they can maintain only together.
Welcome to
The Intercultural Communication and Leadership School
These 17 young adults from London, mostly from the borough of Tower Hamlets, from English, Irish, Irish traveller, Bangladeshi, Spanish, Caribbean, Indian, Rwandan, Togolese, Somali, Burundi, Zimbabwean and Ukrainian and different religious and non-religious backgrounds worked together in the residential seminar of the Micro Cosmos Intercultural (MCI) project in the last week of April 2010. Some of the organizers and other resource persons also feature on the above photo.
Participants and resource persons talked and drew conclusions about identity and community; the local intercultural situation in Tower Hamlets and search for civic solutions; leadership and emotional intelligence skills; conflict resolution skills; media skills, and how could alumni of the residential set up the ICLS London Network of Trust.
The ICLS and the Intercivil Society carried out this, in partnership with Praxis Community Projects and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. Leap Confronting Conflict, the British Council and many grassroots organizations from East and South London gave a strong contribution to the success of the project. The British Foreign Office was represented at one part of the seminar as the national Focal Point of the Alliance of Civilizations.
Participants only:
On the last evening, intercultural fun was provided by the participants. Organizers contributed as audience through their astonishment...
The project has been continuing after the residential seminar by the participants setting up their ICLS London Network of Trust, an informal local leadership network of the alumni for good governance of local diversity and for spreading the results of the MCI pilot project world-wide. The latter is called Micro Cosmos of Civilization (MCC), and it is planned to be taken to all continents (save Antarctica) by the Intercivil Society in the forthcoming years. The ICLS has been invited by the UN to report back on the MCI projects at the 3rd Forum of the Alliance of Civilizations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in May.
