The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) launched the call for applications for the thirteenth edition of its Fellowship Programme. The call is open to emerging leaders and young professionals from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and North America.
For each cohort (Europe and North America on one end and North Africa and the Middle East on the other end) ten to twelve participants will be selected to travel for two weeks to their counterparts’ region. During their trip, these emerging leaders will interact with actors from various backgrounds in order to get an extensive grasp of their host country’s culture, politics, society, religion, media and more.
The UNAOC Fellowship Programme aims at fostering intercultural exchange and interfaith understanding by engaging with emerging leaders and young professionals from across the world. The Programme offers its participants a first hand exposure to diversity and the opportunity to experience cultural immersion while interacting with a wide range of local actors and partners. In every country visited, fellows are being provided with crucial comprehension knowledge and experience to understand the plurality and the complexity of their surroundings.
The main objective of the Fellowship is to involve participants into intercultural cooperation and interfaith dialogue, and encourage them to engage in broader and deeper discussions on cultural awareness and sensitivity. By exposing fellows to new ideas and perspectives, and by immersing them into culturally diverse and unfamiliar environments, the Fellowship Programme aims at challenging perceptions and deconstructing stereotypes. Building on that first step, participants are then better qualified to position themselves as informed stakeholders and to develop cross-cultural partnerships between peoples from different religions and origins.