Dec7
CÃntia Lopes, a portuguese artist and street performer, went to Dialogue Cafe this afternoon to join a session between young palestinian and portuguese students. CÃntia rides her monocycle everyday through the hills of Lisbon and her joy and free spirit are contagious.
Dima, a 15 years old palestinian student, hosted this session in Ramallah. Her wisdom and strong will are remarkable. All the students were impressed with her accuracy and sense of humor. She and her colleagues belong to Youth Council of Ramallah Municipality and they exchanged experiences and points of view about their daily lives and the projects they have to help to prevent child labour.
Before the end of the meeting, Dima asked portuguese students if they have anything similar to a Youth Council and she was perplexed when they answered that there is no similar organization in Lisbon.
Portuguese students explained to Palestinian peers that civic engagement is done in schools or youth organizations of political parties. Dima and his colleagues underlined the importance of the Youth Council in a country where all fight for a common cause: Palestine!
In Lisbon there are many problems and challenges, but the fact that the Portuguese live freely in its territory reveals a big difference between Portugal and Palestine. It was very enlightening to all to realize these asymmetries and the portuguese students learned a lot with their palestinian peers. Their feedback is that they are amazed with the extraordinary force with which the youth of Ramallah handle their everyday life
Dec5
The formats of the DC sessions are endless and very diverse: one day we celebrate life in a birthday party of someone who lives on the other side of the world, and the day after we help someone whose life is in danger.
Today the DC table joined a small group of surgeons: Dr. Haitham Alhassan, a palestinian neurosurgeon, who lives in Ramallah, will perform a delicate, complex and very risky surgery to try to save the life of a Palestinian girl of 2 years, needed a second opinion from peers internationally recognized. In Cleveland, Kristine Blackman and Dr. Solomon, a vascular surgeon and a neurosurgeon sat at the same table with Dr.Haitham to validate his medical options.
It was a very rewarding and enlightening session and we all realized the impact and potential that DC has in bringing people from all over the world, regardless of their fields of expertise.
And if today we helped to save a baby’s life, a few weeks ago the DC served to celebrate the anniversary of Amira, a Palestinian friend with who we all sang happy birthday and with whom we had a party and (almost) shared the birthday cake.
Nov29
“The fear of failing blocks people, but we have to loose this fear and take risks” agreed a group of entrepreneurs who met today through DC. University teachers and students, and some entrepreneurs from UK, Lisbon and Ramallah exchanged experiences and knowledge, but also some of their failures and successes.
“Even the most successful entrepreneurs have a story of failure and success, the most important is to be on the road”, said Barbara Cruz, fashion designer and yoga teacher who started her own business and now works between Lisbon, Tokio and NY (http://www.babayoga.net/)
This trilateral meeting between Lisboa, Ramallah and Northampton University has been enlightening for all participants.
João Loureiro, portuguese entrepreneur, founder and CEO of WACT – WE ARE CHANGING TOGETHER (www.wact.pt), a NGO focused in teaching entrepreneurship to university students (WACT Spirit 2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIoH6eE2oFE&feature=plcp gave a brief and accurate testimony after the DC session.
Jorge Moita, from Krvkurva – Design Behind Bars project, http://krvkurvadesignofficialstore.bigcartel.com/ (work through arts in prisons, Portugal) quoted Samuel Beckett’s legendary statement: “Fail, fail again, fail better!”.
Moita said: “I work with people restarting from bottom-up, people who are not afraid to fail” and it’s important to loose this fear.
Ricardo Marvão, entrepreneur, founder & CEO of EVOLVE Space Services, company that employs several engineers in the Space Sector, mostly for ESA and EUMETSAT, is the co-founder of Beta-i (http://beta-i.pt/) an association that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship in Portuguese society. He brought to Portugal the SEED CAMPS concept, to help start-upers to succeed.
Nov26
Dialogue Cafe @London Sanitation Hackathon
Next friday, we’ll be participating at the London Sanitation Hackathon, hosted by the Hub Westminster.  The Sanitation Hackathon brings together technologists and creative minds with sanitation experts to develop innovative solutions to some of the greatest sanitation challenges facing the developing world.
The event, which is being organised by the World Bank alongside local and global partners, will take place simultaneously in several cities across the world around the time of the World Toilet Summit (3rd December 2012). London will play host to the UK event which is being organised by Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) and sponsored by Unilever’s Domestos brand. Sanitation is one of the biggest global challenges with 2.5 billion people lacking access to improved sanitation and over 1 billion people practicing open defecation. With the number of mobile subscriptions exceeding 5 billion, more people today have access to a mobile phone than a toilet. The Sanitation Hackathon emerges out of the recognition that the rapid increase of penetration, awareness and literacy in information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the developing world can transform water and sanitation management.
The Sanitation Hackathon follows on the success of the first ever Water Hackathon in October 2011, initiated by the World Bank. The event featured nearly 1,000 registered hackers at ten locations worldwide who developed some 62 new prototypes. The objective of the sanitation hackathon is to develop innovative software solutions that address real-world problems in sanitation, which are being discussed ahead of time by sanitation professionals, and posted here:Â http://www.sanitationhackathon.org/
Nov26
I’m officially  a member of the Hub Westminster, the most exciting place to work in London (specially now that we have Dialogue Cafe up and running here)! 
Nov22
“WE BELIEVE IN PALESTINE!” said a choir of voices of students and teachers from Birzeit University of Ramallah, Palestine. Today they met students and teachers from Universidade Católica de Lisboa, Portugal, to exchange experiences and share testimonies during a couple of hours. The human framework in Ramallah Dialogue Cafe was quite impressive.
In Lisbon we started with students and a very special teacher: Ines d’Orey, in wheelchair since she had an accident, 20 years ago. Her story and her strong will inspired the Ramallah group and some of the palestinian students asked her to give some details about the way she resists to adversity. RESILIENCE is the key word for Palestinians.
In Ramallah the diversity of areas of expertise was fabulous: from computer engineers to educational field and traditional folclore dancers; from agricultural organizations to human resources and advertising agency; from UN Programs of Development collaborators to visual arts and a supermarket chain experience, almost all areas were debated.
Palestinian people shared their hard political and social reality, and all the participants spoke and added some details about their daily hard life and difficult challenges. Unfortunately while this DC session was in progress, West Bank clashes and riots in the streets of Gaza never stoped.
” WHILE WE ARE HERE TALKING TO EACH OTHERS, TRYING TO FIND WAYS TO HELP PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, OUR CHILDREN AND CIVILIANS ARE BEING SHOT” said a girl, one of the students in DC room.
“WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO EFFECTIVELY HELP!” Here lies the worst frustration of these group of palestinians who cross checkpoints on a daily basis and who have to wait long hours to have some food and water supplies.
When portuguese students and teachers asked them if they are afraid they said YES and when someone asked about their dreams, they answered:
“OUR DREAMS ARE VERY SIMPLE: SEE THE SEA WITHOUT SOLDIERS AND BARRIERS TO CROSS; FEELING SAFE IN THE STREETS, HAVING A HOME.”
In the next future new DC sessions will take place to discuss RESILIENCE and to let europeans know more about real life in real Palestine, under israeli occupation. The good news today? Amira’s 26th birthday! Portuguese and Palestinian celebrated together her life and joy despite all the bad memories and circumstances. Tomorrow we’ll post here the video where all sing to Amira.
