People Meet People: fostering multicultural dialogue in Norway.
The dialogue method People meet people is developed by Arendal adult education, With Heart for Arendal and Arendal Library. The idea of People meets people came as a response that more among the locals who had lived in the city long wanted more contact with newly arrived refugees and immigrants – and vice versa. Inspired by a library in Sweden, which in addition to lending books also loaned out Swedes to refugees and immigrants, we created our own variant.
The original People meet the people concept was as follows: ten newly arrived immigrants and refugees from Arendal adult education met ten familiar faces in Arendal for dialogue in public space. The idea was to connect people who could have pleasure or interest in meeting across ethnic and cultural divides.
On the basis of this, we purposefully began inviting newly arrived refugees, immigrants and long-dwelling local people to daytime dialogue meetings. We connected people who might never otherwise meet each other, and it should turn out that People meet people had greater heart power than anyone could have an idea beforehand.
Up until now, several hundred people have attended People meet people. They ask us to spread the method and to continue dialogue work. Funds from the Gjensidige Foundation have enabled us to systematically go to work systematically. People meet people are now spread throughout Agder through the Norwegian Library Association Agder, and we constantly find that municipalities across the country contact us with a desire to arrange their local People meet people.
Today, the centre of gravity of the People’s Movement is meeting people in local libraries, in collaboration with adult education, refugee services/NAVs and volunteer centres. It’s an important basic principle that People face folk events should be locally anchored. Therefore, good training is always given in the method ahead of events.
More information:
https://democracy.uia.no/people-meet-people-norway/