PROJECT DESCRIPTION

This two-year-project – 01.01.2005 until 31.12.2006 – is part of the German federal support program “entimon – Together against violence and right-wing extremism”. CFB organised in this framework an international Starter Conference on November 14-16, 2005 under the patronage of the Council of Europe, of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, and of the German UNESCO Commission. Participants from local authorities and from NGOs from ten European cities attended this conference: Brussels, Budapest, Istanbul, London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Prague and Warsaw. 

The special interest of the project is to propose and to support a co-operation between municipalities and NGOs in the field of human rights education and of combating racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and intolerance (RAXI). This way it can find a new balance between public and private responsibility. CFB works closely together with the Management of the European Youth Centre Budapest of the Council of Europe, as well as with professional trainers in the field of youth work and human rights education from the trainer’s pool of the Council of Europe. The trainers of the CFB come from the participating cities and accompany the process of co-operation between administration and NGOs linking each conference. 

The Compass, a handbook on human rights education for educational work both in and out of a school context, which was presented by the Council of Europe in 2005, and the Revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe offer both a solid foundation.

November 13 -15, 2006 a further international conference will take place, strengthening the theme and the co-operation. The aim of the CFB and of its project partners is to safeguard a lasting European exchange of experiences and of ideas and constant relations on the working level after the end of the entimon project 2006. In this respect, the CFB created a contact and exchange platform by means of a new entimon Internet site.

Furthermore a handbook on the co-operation between politics, administration and civil society on local level will be drafted and presented as a result product at the end of the year. The focus of its theme will be the human rights and youth work. Next to the theoretical and political level it will include practical pieces of advice for co-operation possibilities, as well as concrete examples from the ten European partner cities. New forms of democratic understanding on a local level and new defined relations between the citizens and their city will be presented. The book aims to prompt towards more participation of the citizens and courage of one’s convictions and to present new strategies of urban development, taking account of the different local realities.

CFB, as a German-French organisation, started in parallel with this part of the project a co-operation between the German and the French institutions. The results of this co-operation are the Paris-Berlin conferences.

November 2005 CFB invited for the first time a delegation from Paris and Berlin to the first Paris-Berlin conference. The aim was to prompt to a common reflection about integrated signs of action and a bilateral exchange about special themes: How does the social networking look like locally, how do the integration, the projects and the participation look like?

The second meeting took place in Paris in March 2006 and the third meeting occurred in Berlin in May 2006; they both enabled the representatives of integration, urban development and youth from the administration of Berlin and Paris to get to know their contact persons and the structures of the administration of the other city, as well as to exchange mutual information about the local structures and strategies. The participants had also the chance to visit local projects and to have an exchange of experiences and of best practices. They suggested a concrete form of co-operation by organising a regular co-operation with common structure and themes between young people from Berlin and Paris.

In this respect, CFB aims to enhance the already existing exchange and to offer it a long-term and lasting perspective after the end of the entimon project in 2006 by developing concrete projects and, should the occasion arise, by applying for a subsequent project.