Intercultural work

Intercultural work is one of our three fields of activity, alongside development education and our development cooperation in Africa. In Berlin, we bring mosques, schools, churches, and associations into conversation with one another – to counter extremism and to help people live well together.

Strong Network – Strong Schools

In 2014, together with the Yunus Emre Mosque, we launched the project “Strong Network – Strong Schools.” The subtitle said it all: “This is how connected schools can be!” We had three goals:

• Bringing schools on board: The mosque was already working with the police. This network was now to reach schools and social institutions in the neighborhood as well.
• Getting more mosques involved: Other mosques were to connect with schools and youth facilities.
• Learning from one another: Mosques reach many people. There, we wanted to strengthen the exchange on intercultural and interfaith learning and on anti-racist education, and to make information easier to access.

Workshops and round tables

We relied on moderated workshops and round tables: expert presentations as input first, followed by open discussion. The focus was on these topics:

• Religious extremism
• Right-wing extremism
• Conflicts at school
• Hostility toward democracy
• Identity

More from our dialogue work

In the years that followed, we continued to bring people in Berlin into conversation with one another:

• Interfaith and intercultural dialogue: an overview of this area of our work, including the discussion series “Islam meets democracy” (2015), again together with the Yunus Emre Mosque.
• Wedding Network for Intercultural Dialogue (2016–2017): mosques, churches, and migrant associations in Wedding around one table.
• Coming Together Through Dialogue (2016–2017): conversations about the causes of flight and project days at schools.