Food for Thought – The Virtual Dinner Guest Project is coming to The Netherlands!
The Lutfia Rabbani Foundation is bringing to the Netherlands the Virtual Dinner Guest Project, as profiled in Forbes Magazine and L’Orient le Jour, to connect Dutch university students to youth in Cairo and Beirut. The setting is a virtual dinner. Over Skype students from the University of Leiden and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague will share a meal with university students from Cairo and Palestinian youth living in Lebanese refugee camps. The first dinner will take place on October 11, 2014. The press are welcome to observe and report on this collaboration.
The Virtual Dinner Guest Project is an international multimedia initiative born from a simple premise. Over a shared meal, the prevalent media stereotypes of ‘the other’ are discussed and together they are deconstructed. After the shared dinner, the participants become citizen journalists by taking the questions from the discussions to the streets and interviewing everyday people.
The outcome of the shared dinners are short films that will be shown during the conference titled “The Arab Future and the Role of Europe” organized by the Lutfia Rabbani Foundation on November 27, 2014 at the Peace Palace, The Hague. Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN Syria envoy, will deliver the keynote address and the Dutch Foreign Minister will officially open the conference. The event is co-sponsored by the European Cultural Foundation.
Intrigued? For an impression of the Virtual Dinner Guest Project view the following videos:
– Watch this short video to follow the dinner discussions between Palestinian youth in Gaza with the Native American Community in the US.
– Watch the videos Egypt for Washington D.C. and Washington D.C. for Egypt to follow the street interviews conducted.
