DC Beirut is arriving! 0 Reply

Thanks to the extraordinary team at AltCity and the support of Sergio (our long suffering CTO) Dialogue Café Beirut is hours away from going live! 

Women and economic development 0 Reply

On the 13th of February we had a very successful and insightful dialogue cafe on the topic of women and economic development. The dialogue took place between women  Executives  from Ramallah and Cleveland including  Doa Wadi – Executive director of  Business Women Forum – Palestine, Fatin Farahat – Director of the Cultural Unit, Ramallah Municipality, and Raya Sbitany- Head of the Quality Assurance and Investor Relations Departments, Bank of Palestine.  The women from Cleveland were Shilpa Kedar,  Cleveland Foundation, Mary Helen Petrus,  the Reserve Bank, and Anya Briggs from Case Western Reserve University.

Topics centered on the importance of women empowerment, regardless of her background or the field she is working in.  In addition, the importance of the Business Development services for women starting their business, the awareness and skills to build their capacity to assist them move into the economic sectors in their communities. It was clear that in both societal and cultural pressures influence women’s decisions in entering into the business world, some more subtle than others.  It was clearly highlighted the importance of the funding and the role banks and MFI’s play in decreasing the obstacles of women finding a suitable access to finance.  Where the 2 banking ladies passed their banks experiences.

In Ramallah, the women emphasized on the obstacles they face whether it was social restraints especially for women in marginalized areas, and above all, an occupation everyone endures on a daily basis that overshadows the importance for women to be empowered. However, it was clear that these women in their respective fields strive to overcome these constraints by encouraging women to become economically self-sufficient, establishing their own businesses, offer mentoring and training, and other means.

The importance of being an artist 4 4

Portuguese musicians met polish musicians in Dialogue Cafe. It has been the first session co-hosted by Wroclaw and Lisboa and the meeting lasted for more then 2 hours. All the participants came to brainstorm and share experiences about being an artist. This was another enriching and open minded session. It opened everyone’s minds to diversity and also to some similarities between polish and portuguese musicians expectations and challenges.

In the video above Filipa Pinto Ribeiro, classic guitar player, played beautifully an impromptu and in the end of the session she challenged Adam, the young classical-contemporary composer who participated (and is the boy with grey shirt in the picture) to compose a piece that she or Pedro Ferro, the piano player who also participated, can play in the next session.

The polish musicians are Andrzej Strzemżalski, Adam Porębski and Rafał Sieraczek. The portuguese musicians are Pedro Ferro, Filipa Pinto Ribeiro and Luis Jeronimo. On portuguese side attended also Miguel Sobral Cid, vice Director of Music Program in Gulbenkian Foundation. Soon, very soon, all the links to all the musicians will be posted here.

Yvon Le Roux: “It’s not always about money, it’s about passion!” 0 Reply

When we google Yvon Le Roux, we’re amazed with all his experience, initiatives, projects and knowledge. “As Vice-President of the Public Sector for Cisco Systems in the European Markets, Yvon Le Roux is responsible for strategy, sales and marketing for government, healthcare, education and defence. He was appointed to head the newly-formed Public Sector team in May 2003 and increased sales by 30% within two years” it’s written in his brief Cisco bio. Yvon is a blockbuster and a missionary of modern times and … AT – Advanced Technologies. He came to Dialogue Cafe in Paris, to give a lecture on Social Innovation to a group of MBA students from the Birzeit University. Professor Sabri Saidam brought his students to Dialogue Cafe in Ramallah, and they asked questions and shared experiences with Yvon Le Roux. In the end of this enlightening session, Yvon and the students underlined the essential.

This has been just the first of a series of monthly lectures in DC. Feel free to join next time!To know more, leave a commentary. Northampton is organizing the second one, on the 5th of March, at 6pm (GMT) with the author Margaret Ledwith (http://www.infed.org/community/critical_community_development.htm)
Margaret Ledwith lives in Lancaster where she is Emeritus Professor of Community Development and Social Justice at the University of Cumbria. She is also a coordinator of the international Collaborative Action Research Network. For many years, she was a grassroots community worker, and it was this experience of working with marginalised communities that forged the foundation of a lifetime commitment to social justice. She has written three books: Participating in Transformation: Towards a working model of community empowerment (1997), Community Development: A critical approach (2005) and, with Jane Springett, Participatory Practice: Community-based action for transformative change (2009).

Dialogue Café Wroclaw is up and running! 1

Dialogue Café Wroclaw, a join venture with Wroclaw Municipality and Wroclaw Biblioteka is up and running. We are very excited to welcome our 10th Dialogue Cafe, and first in Eastern Europe. The DC Wroclaw is managed by Karolina Zdrojewska (dialogue.cafe@biblioteka.wroc.pl).

Architecture and Social Media: fragments of a DC session between Lisbon and Ramallah 0 Reply

This was the topic of the session, but as always the question triggered a lot of items, including the daily life and cultural challenges of palestinian people and also some gaps between eastern and western new gens.

Once said what’s allowed and not allowed in public spaces in Palestine and arab countries, one of the portuguese architecture students went back to basics to underline the importance of Facebook connections in a small scale country like Portugal.

The dialog between palestinian and portuguese young architects to-be was full of joy, but also full of moments to dig deep and pose better questions to try to better understand the roles of social media and public space. In the end both teachers agreed to bring their students to future DC sessions and meanwhile suggested a co-assignement. That’s what DC is meant for, too.