The European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (EYID 2008), which follows the Year of Equal Opportunities For All in 2007, aims to encourage all those living in Europe to explore the benefits of the region's rich cultural heritage and learn from different cultural traditions.
From the beginning of February, the Youth Cultural Association will start its Heritage from the Past programme, which aims to help youth between the ages of 14 and 18 to understand their heritage and promote connectedness. Also from the start of the month, the Cultural Triangle Programme will foster links between the different cultures in and around Southeast Hungary, including those in the Vojvodina region of Serbia and historic Transylvania in Romania.
The Youth Counsellors for Global Education in Hungary programme, an initiative of the PLANET foundation, will expose disadvantaged young people who live in the countryside or villages to different cultures.
The Hungarolingua Foundation will launch How To Understand One Another's Language, a project that attempts to shed light on cultural identity in order to promote better understanding, in mid-February.
Budapest's Corvinus University International Office will showcase education systems from different countries during its Corvinus National Weeks programme, which runs from February until April.
With the slogan "Together in diversity", the European Year aims to contribute to mutual understanding and better living together. It will explore the benefits of cultural diversity, active civic participation in European affairs and seeks to foster a sense of European belonging.
International stars who have agreed to become "European Ambassadors for Intercultural Dialogue" during the year include the French singer Charles Aznavour, the Swedish writer Henning Mankell and the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. Hungary's ambassadors come from a broad palette: the husband and wife violinist duo of Barnabás Kelemen and Katalin Kokas the Kerekes Band, the chess master Judit Polgár and the water polo champion Dániel Varga. It's not by chance the ambassadors are young: the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue is specifically aimed at young people.
