The summer holidays are approaching. Our annual Intercultural Dialogue Day in September is just around the corner! Intercultural Dialogue Day is the day when AFS gives particular space to the initiative and creativity of volunteers, to reach wider audiences in promoting intercultural learning through youth exchanges.
What will you be doing on Intercultural Dialogue Day 2015?
The theme of IDD this year will be ‘Active Citizenship’, in line with EFIL’s theme for 2015, namely Citizenship Education. The project ACTIVE, aimed at including active citizenship content in AFS orientations, is producing online tools to be used also during IDD. Curious on how to use these? There will be the AFS Active Citizens video showing stories of AFSers who define themselves active citizens and you can show it at your public events! Also, at any IDD event you organize, you should tweet #afsactivecitizens and #EFILafs so that the pictures and tweets about your event will appear on the twitter wall on the website activecitizens.org! And finally, there will be a Manual of Activities on Active Citizenship that you are welcome to use at your IDD event! Everything will be launched at the Volunteer Summer Summit in August.
At EFIL we aim at giving visibility to all the IDD events taking place this year. So add your event to the Googlemap mapping all IDD events around Europe and let everyone know about your plans to celebrate Intercultural Dialogue. Follow the instructions on the EFIL website.
As every year, EFIL launches another online contest for IDD 2015. Volunteers from all over Europe are invited to engage in the BEST IDD PHOTO & VIDEO contest!
It consists of two competitions through the Intercultural Dialogue Day Facebook Page:
- the best IDD picture
- the best IDD video
The competition will run from Thursday 24 September until Thursday 8 October.
AFS volunteers will post the photos and videos of their IDD event on the Wall of the FB page, together with the description of the IDD event itself. It is very important that each video and picture participating in the contest is accompanied by a description of the IDD event according to the standard format. People will then vote on the picture or video clicking on ‘Like’. Remember that people can ‘Like’ the photo or video only if they first ‘Like’ the Intercultural Dialogue Day Facebook Page!
Any AFSer will be able to join the IDD contests (in group or individually). In case volunteers participate in the contest in a group/team, they have to appoint a representative who posts the picture or video on the FB page.
Volunteers should inform one staff person from their AFS national organisation about their event, so that offices can track all the IDD events in each country.
There will be 2 winners of the contest – one in each category! The photo and the video that receive the most votes – Likes – will receive a free registration for one volunteer team member at the EFIL Volunteer Summer Summit 2016.
For more information please contact izabela.jurczik-arnold@afs.org.