On Thursday, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and BMW Group for the Intercultural Innovation Award announced the 10 awardees for 2017, ranking Egypt’s Safarni project second. Safarni designs and facilitates “Simulated Travel Adventures” for children, with little exposure to diversity, to embrace and connect with cultures. Migrant communities are engaged to design, personalize and facilitate the intercultural content. The “Simulated Travel Adventures” then takes place over eight weeks where children can play, dance, eat and interact with locals from around the world. In 2008, the Founder of Safarni Raphaelle Ayach was working in Madrid, Spain and studying Arabic. As she began making friends from the Arab world, she noticed herself becoming more sensitive and aware of the ever-present racism against Arabs in Europe. At the same time, she also began to notice many prejudices held by the Arab communities against Europeans. On both sides, she was surprised to find intelligent people holding tight to their fears of “the other”. Usually, these fears were not based on actual encounters with people from the community, but based on what they had “heard”. Ayach wondered to herself why these prejudices (on both sides) were…
