Rails of Peace Project

In an earlier post I have mentioned The European Rails of Peace Project. I was contacted earlier this week by Marco, from Italy, who is the project coordinator of the project. He read my post and was very pleased to see that we'd given this unique project some special attention on InterRail Station. Herefore he send me a short report about the project and his experiences combines with some pictures of the group.

I placed the report and the pictures in this post for you to see (beneath). There is also a video of the Rails of Peace Project 2006 on Youtube.

"The European Rails of Peace project is a collaborative initiative of the Glocal Forum and the Cultural Association Travels and Freedom, in partnership with the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe and the support of public-private partners such as: the Eurail Group, the Council of Europe, the World Bank Vice-Presidency for Europe and Central Asia, Unilever South Central Europe, the Cities of Vienna, Siena and Rome, and many more.                                              

The aim of the project is to promote peace and respect for diversity by bringing together young students from different religious and ethnic groups and in particular to help Balkan youth break through the challenges of mobility limitations due to visa regimes and give them the chance to travel trough Europe.

Each year, since 2006, 50 youth from Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo are given free visa and InterRail passes to experience Europe and to participate in Peach Building activities.

This year edition started on 17^th July in Vienna where all the youth have been gathered for a two days activities in common, followed by 3 days stop in Rome and finally in Siena before leaving for their InterRail in mixed groups.

“My name is Marco and I am the project coordinator for Travels and Freedom association and this year too I accompanied the whole group of youth of the Balkans through the first part of the project. I just   came back from Siena, the last stop, where we really had a warm hospitality from the Municipality of Siena. 

The same it has been the case in Vienna and in Rome, where the youth have had the chance to share their perspectives with peers from communities previously engaged in conflict and to express their opinions about sensitive topics such as: national identities, cultural heritage, memory and reconciliation and the role of media, while debating such issues with their peers and with relevant experts.

This is exactly the added value of the project, the unique mix of travelling with InterRail, the best way to socialise, and the possibility to participate in workshops and conferences with top level experts to share their perspective about peace and reconciliation.”"   

Marco als met with Esther and Martha, the two journalist cq. InterRailers from Europocket.tv .Esther and Martha interviewed some of the participants of The Rails of Peace project. This will be shown on one of the broadcasts on Europocket.tv as well as on InterRail Station. 

Sheena

Rails of Peace project

Interrailing is hot! Especially now during summer break many young people go on an European adventure. However there are European residents for whom it isn't so easy to travel through Europe. I'm talking about people from Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia. They need a (hard to obtain) visa to travel outside their country.   

Herefore The European Rails of Peace Project, organized by the Glocal Forum and Viaggi e Liberta Cultural Organization, provided 50 students, aged 18-25, from the Balkan with visas and sponsorship to travel through Europe together!

I think this is a great initiative to promote peace and respect for diversity in Europe. This project offers the students a chance to meet with and question high-level officials and discuss political issues affecting their futures. This can also be very interesting for other European residents. For more information about this project and the events, see http://blog.europe.inter-rail.it/. They're traveling as we speak so you might come across one or more of the participants!

The Europocket girls will also be joining the Rails of Peace group to do some interviews (video). These videos will be shown later on, on InterRail Station.

I wish the Rails of Peace group a lot of luck and fun on their trip!

Sheena

Next Free InterRail Pass: 36 hours to go...

This week we have welcomed a lot of new players on Raildance Express from many countries across Europe and it's fun to see that there are some very fanatic players!

Tolga Besci from Turkey and Hannamari from Finland have been competing head to head for the first position in this week's highscore. Yesterday, J. Grzesiek from Poland topped the highscore with a new all time high record of 6103 points!

At the time of writing this post, there are about 36 hours left for other players to beat J. Grzesiek. This round closes again at saturday 24:00 Central European Time (CET).

Let the better (wo)man win!

Enjoy,

- The RailDance Express team