Reaching the sky together

Jacqueline Dekkers
(Age 17, The Netherlands)

When I heard about the troubles in France this year, I was very shocked.

Young people with Arabic roots protested in a terrible way because they felt discriminated in France.

Their behavior was of course not correct, but I think that they could not find a better way to express their frustation and impotence to make a positive change in their lives.

It is hard to believe that in 2006 things like that are still hapenning in Europe.

Haven’t we learned from the history how terrible things can happen when people hate another groep of people just because they are different from themselves?

In Holland there is also a multicultural society. Here live a lot of people from very different countries. It would be terrible if here in Holland would also happen something like in France.

A lot of adult people in Europe underestimate these social problems. Some people even say that discrimination does not exist here, but in another countries. It seems that they do not want to see the reality.

I think that we have to see all the problems in our society if we want to avoid terrible things. We should try to find a way to prevent social problems before they happen.

It seems to me that a radical change in our society has to occur in order to prevent such awful things. I was thinking a lot about this issue. That’s when I got a good idea.

I think that young people have got a lot of power. Young people are very enthusiastic and dynamic and they don’t give up soon if they have a goal. We young people have got a dream, we want to improve the world.

In my neighborhood I organized a multicultural festival. When the community heard about my plans to start a multicultural festival they were very excited. So they decided to support my festival. The local newspaper wrote an article about my project. It was a very good idea to promote the festival this way. Other companies wanted to support the festival by giving free food and drinks during the festival. When my friends and my school heard about it they were very proud of me. And of course they were willing to give a hand. I was surprised about the enthusiasm from everybody, young and old. The most important was that young people from all different cultures came together and worked hard on the project.

All of them had the same goal, to understand each other and to learn to appreciate the differences and similarities between each other. We danced, we ate, we song and we laughed together. There were about 500 young people at the multicultural festival. They came from different countries from all over the world such like, Morocco, Turkey, Surinam, China, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iran, and from Africa. It was wonderful to see so much cultural diversity, and how proud all of this young people were about there background.

We organized a cultural fashion show, and there were also different groups who played typical music of all these countries. At the last moment I got the idea to organize a dancing contest. This was a big success. The guests could take part of the contest. This dancing contest was very special because every participant had to give a performance of a typical dance from three different countries. They were not allowed to dance the typical dances of there own country. It was amazing to see how good young people can learn from each other. We had young people from Morocco who learned Dutch people dance their typical dances. We chose four very different dances from around the world: samba, Greek dance, Indian dance and African dance. There were a lot of people who wanted to participate in the dance contest. It was a very exciting contest, and everybody had a lot of fun. The winner was a girl from China, she had really good moves. She won a collection of music from many different countries and cultures.

At the end of the festival everyone was very positive about my project. They even made plans to organize the multicultural festival next year again. A lot of sponsors offered their financial aid for next year. We have even formed a group of young people who will want to help to organize this event next year.

If more young people would take the initiative to organize an event like this in their own communities, it would help a lot to have a better understanding between young people from different backgrounds.

I know that my project is just a small step to improve the world, but if everyone would also take a small step, then we could even reach the sky!