An International Youth Workshop was held under the supervision of The Higher Council for Youth in Jordan, beginning on 1/6/2007 and extended for 1 week. The governmentally-funded workshop focused on the issue of co-existence between people from different cultural backgrounds and religions.35 participants from 4 nationalities, Italian, American, Palestinian, and Jordanian, were invited by the Higher Council to attend the workshop. The main goal of this workshop was to highlight the concept of living together in peace and harmony despite diversity in religion, culture, or social status.
The workshop program was divided into two parts, the lectures and the activities. The former spanned 4 days, in which renowned figures of Jordanian society and associations presented various lectures about the principles of co-existence, and on how diversity in cultural backgrounds helps in enriching society on many levels.
Daily afternoon activities included case studies, related to the main subject of the lecture of that day, discussed by the participants. Participants then tried to simulate the case study under discussion, dividing themselves into groups and enacting the exact case circumstances, in order to reach a collective optimal solution.The second part of the workshop was a 2 day tour in Jordan. “This tour helped forge closer relationships with the other participants, and experience the co-existence in the small workshop society created”, as Ayman Arandi -who represented Zajel Youth Exchange Program of the Public Relations Department at An Najah National University, said. The tour included visits to Um-Qais, Petra and Aqaba historical sites in Jordan.
The workshop helped to encourage participants in believing in the real possibility of living in peace, despite differences in religion and roots. It further helped to create friendships between the participants, one of the steps in forging a large-scale network of inter-society relations.