The Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) said it is ready to resume its Imagine peace education programme as soon as possible, including activities during school hours, after President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman agreed on Monday to restart it. The leaders agreed that the programme would recommence under the auspices of the Technical Committee on Education.
The association said its trainers, educational resources and the facilities of the Home for Cooperation (H4C) were prepared for full intercommunal implementation to resume. It will work with the Technical Committee on Education and the education authorities of both communities on the practical arrangements needed for schools to take part without delay, building on the framework agreed in 2017, under which the programme operated successfully, the AHDR said.
Since its launch, Imagine has involved more than 9,500 students and 4,500 teachers from Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot schools across Cyprus. It received the GENE Global Education Award 2020/2021, and the AHDR said it has been consistently acknowledged in the UN Secretary-General’s reports as an important confidence-building measure.
While the school-hours component was suspended, the AHDR kept the programme going through teacher training and educational activities with children.
The AHDR developed Imagine in 2016, and it was placed under the auspices of the Technical Committee on Education in October 2017. The programme is run by the AHDR together with the H4C, funded by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and supported by the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus and the Office of the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Cyprus. It is designed and delivered by a team of educators and trainers from both communities, working in Greek, Turkish and English.
The AHDR was founded in 2003 by educators and historians from both communities. It is governed by an elected board of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot members and led jointly by a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot co-president. It opened the H4C, an educational, cultural and community centre in the UN buffer zone in Nicosia, in 2011.
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