The Intercultural Innovation Award

2014 1ST PRIZE

ORDINARY HEROES (BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA)
Ordinary Heroes is a multimedia peacebuilding project that utilizes stories of
rescuer behavior and moral courage to promote reconciliation and increase
interethnic cooperation among Bosnian citizens and youth. The project
consists of several components including the Heroes in Training youth
workshops, The Rescuers traveling photography exhibition, the Ordinary
Heroes documentary series and the Sran Aleksi Youth Competition.
The rescuers narratives represent all of Bosnias constituent ethnic groups,
highlighting their similarities while reducing the significance of identifying
perpetrators and victims. This project additionally focuses on inspiring
ordinary people to act as heroes and agents of social change and encourages
young people to go beyond conceptual learning by getting them directly
involved in the peacebuilding process. Through the youth workshops and
competition, Bosnian youth are given the chance to utilize their creativity
while actively engaging with their own communities to discover, collect, and
share stories of peacebuilding, moral courage, and intercultural cooperation.
Finally, Ordinary Heroes not only incorporates the stories of Bosnian
rescuers, but also features narratives from the Holocaust, Rwanda and
Cambodia. This project has been designed for expansion and replication as
its emphasis on pro-social behavior and intercultural awareness can be
utilized in a broad range of contexts worldwide.
The Ordinary Heroes project has been done in collaboration with PROOF:
Media for Social Justice, Pinch Media, the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting (IWPR), the Sarajevo School for Science and Technology, and the
War Art Reporting and Memory Foundation (WARM).

2012 1ST PRIZE

PUERTA JOVEN (MEXICO)
Puerta Joven, a youth-led organization, visits schools and community centers
with young professional filmmakers to teach the use of arts and new

technologies as a way to promote cultural interaction and appreciation of

cultural diversity.
Lenguas Jvenes (Languages of Youth) is a project that fosters youth cultural
expressions through mobile phones for intercultural dialogue. Puerta Joven, a
youth-led organization, visits schools and community centers with young
professional filmmakers to teach the use of arts and new technologies as a
way to promote cultural interaction and appreciation of cultural diversity.
The young filmmaker teaches the beneficiaries, aged twelve to twenty years
old, how to use creative tools found in mobile phones (photo, audio and
video) to develop short films. Young people from different cultural identities
cooperate with each other to generate shared cultural expressions and
express their ideas about the youth civic engagement, cultural diversity and
peace.
The project serves urban communities where indigenous youth groups have
migrated and are being discriminated because of their cultural identity or the
use of an indigenous language. The program helps people understand that
migration to the cities doesnt have to represent an obstacle to the survival
of indigenous languages. We encourage freedom of expression and the right
to not being discriminated against because of its exercise.
The project has been developed in eight different cities in Mexico, and will be
replicated in Guatemala, a neighboring country that shares the same
challenges to ensure respect and peaceful interaction among youths from
different cultural backgrounds.

2011 1ST PRIZE

MEJDI TOURS DUAL NARRATIVE TOURS TO ISRAEL AND PALESTINE
(PALESTINE)
MEJDI, a project designed at CRDC, is a joint Jewish-Arab tour program that
creates custom group tours to Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt.
MEJDI Tours is a joint Jewish-Arab tour organization that creates custom group
tours to Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt. Their flagship project,
the Dual Narrative tour, is led by Israeli and Palestinian peacebuilders. It is
an innovative approach for learning about the Middle East that highlights the
different narratives of Israelis and Palestinians from a variety of cultural,

political, and religious backgrounds. In addition, MEJDI provides responsible

tour experiences by investing financially in the communities where they
work.
MEJDIs was founded by conflict resolution professionals affiliated with
George Mason Universitys Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and
Conflict Resolution (CRDC). CRDC engages in practice, education, and
research concerning peacebuilding in conflicts where religion, economy and
culture play a significant role. They partner with local educators, politicians,
religious leaders, non-governmental organizations, and community groups,
with the goal of offering a nuanced perspective of the region and connecting
groups with local change-makers. MEJDI Tours contributes to the
sustainability of CRDC peacebuilding work.