What is the project „Vacation from War“ doing? What is it about? What does dialogue mean to us?

The project „Vacation from War“ enables dialogues between young people from war and crisis zones and thus aims to establish an exemplary peace practice.

At the moment, we work together with local partners in Israel and Palestine and Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. There are no preconditions for the dialogues, except the willingness to listen to and talk to each other. They are deliberately open-ended, no agreements and no hasty gestures of reconciliation are expected. As this could lead to important issues not being discussed, but subordinated to these goals.

The seminars focus on the process and the joint examination of existing or past conflicts. This means getting to know the „others“ as people with their truth and reality of life. This is deliberately made possible for young people with different educational backgrounds or social status and is not aimed at members of existing organisations or potential decision makers.

„Vacation from War“ is a grassroots initiative and aims to support civil society and its own initiatives.Our common goal is to make a contribution to improving the political reality of life on the ground and to achieving peaceful life togehter, in justice. This requires an awareness of asymmetric power relations and privileges as well as mechanisms of discrimination and prejudice. The encounters and Dialogue Seminars encourage participants to take a clear position on political reality and to critically question also their own society.