Name of organization:
NGO “Cultural Education Center TOMIRIS”
Description of organization:
Cultural Educational Center TOMIRIS is a non-governmental organization with the mandate of empowering girls. They do this through raising their civic, legal, economic, social and cultural awareness as well as building girls’ capacity to defend their rights and pursue their interests.
Project description/context:
During the last decade, the border regions of northern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan have experienced increased tensions among frontier communities, including violent clashes. These conflicts take place against the background of cultural differences and side-by-side cohabitation of different groups in a contested territory and contested borders. Within this context, TOMIRIS identified, beyond intergovernmental attempts to resolve the conflicts and incidents, a lack of opportunities to promote closer ties between the two communities and a lack of grassroots approaches to sustainably resolving the conflict. They proposed a project aimed at promoting sustainable peace and inter-ethnic understanding through intercultural dialogue between youth of neighboring border areas of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with a view to prevent further violence. Intercultural dialogue is understood as a means towards securing sustainable peace. It involves interactions between individuals from different cultural backgrounds, with the objective of understanding each others’ world views, thus overcoming barriers.
Expected results:
By the end of the project, TOMIRIS expects to:
- Hold a 14-day Intercultural Summer Camp (ISC) “See things as your neighbor does” for 20 young people from neighboring cross-border districts of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Half of the training will be held in Isfanaof, Kyrgyzstan, and the second half in Khujand, Tajikistan.
- ISC participants will be trained to act as InterCuDia Ambassadors (Ambassadors for Intercultural Dialogue) in their respective communities and beyond. They will serve as “gate-openers”, on the one hand, and multiply the knowledge and attitudes of intercultural understanding through dialogue, on the other hand.
- Conduct outreach sessions by InterCudia Ambassadors on intercultural understanding, peace and coexistence among school students in their respective locations. The sessions will raise youth awareness about values of intercultural dialogue and peace and the value to act upon them.
- Enable ISC participants to develop a Facebook page on intercultural dialogue as a platform for promoting long-term constructive relationships among ISC participants; spreading the messages of sustainable peace and intercultural understanding to wider youth audiences.
Project coordinator: Ms. Ranokhon Dzhumaeva
Contact information: ngotomiris@mail.ru; rano.dgymaeva@mail.ru
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kg1tj?ref=br_rs
Read More About the UNAOC Youth Solidarity Fund Here