Feb8
World Interfaith Harmony Week: DC supports Syrian students 0 Reply
| The World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW) has been promoted by some of the world’s most influential people and its goal has been to be a completely decentralized initiative.Dialogue Cafe had its first WIHW event on the 8th of February, with a session hosted by Lisbon, where a large and ecumenic group of participants (including the leaders of the main religions) matched with peers from Lebanon and France. Lisbon was connected to Beirute and Paris, where different representatives of different faiths debated different points of view.Since in Portugal a group leaded by former President Jorge Sampaio have been working in developing a Global Platform For Syrian Students, ie a mechanism to provide Syrian Students with scholarships and academic opportunities to resume their studies, all the participants in this session where challenged to commit themselves to this cause.Portugal already received about 40 Syrian students for the Spring Term, and the idea is to raise awareness and funds to bring more students. This Platform has been very successful in securing place with tuition fees waivers in many universities in around 8 countries and this is why former President Sampaio, who every year promotes an activity linked to the UN resolution (that creates the World Interfaith Harmony Week each February ) decided this year to organize an event linking LISBON-PARIS-BEIRUT  to try to match “words with deeds” and therefore challenge the participants to make a commitment to contribute to the creation of a “World Interfaith harmony Week” that this year should be to support Syrian students.
President Sampaio hosted this global conversation and in the end of the session a large majority of the participants really commited themselves with this goal.
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