Finally, it has become reality:  after getting to know each other’s work at South Africa Football for Hope Festival 2010 and almost one year of preparation, the Exchange between KICKFAIR, Peres Center for Peace and the Alquds Association for Democracy and Dialogue has finally taken place. With the support of the Laureus Sport for Good foundation, the German Ministry of interior and adidas, the three organizations met from 30^th of June to the 7^th of July in Stuttgart.

This exchange of knowledge and experiences has taken place on different dimensions – on a staff/coordinator as well as youth leader levels. The main focus was on how to use football in terms of formation and education with a special emphasis on Youth Leadership development. “Until now I never had the chance to meet people from the middle east, and I’m really interested in their culture and challenges; I want to learn more about it” sais Helga, one of the young leaders of KICKFAIR. Already, we are all finding creative ways of communication and crossing the language barrier, as well as teaching each other some basic words in all 3 languages”.

The youth also succeeded to communicate amongst themselves even at the football festival “With the Ball through Life” when rising up to the challenge of mediating together (after barely knowing one another) in the multi-national groups that were playing at the festival. Here they discovered their common language of Fair Play which they will continue to develop during the exchange.

“I was inspired by the accomplishments of the KICKFAIR youth leaders especially realizing their backgrounds” said Liron, one of the youth-leaders-to-be of the Peres Center/Alquds project. We feel the exchange is already motivating the Israeli and Palestinian youth to continue and develop their leadership skill and community involvement. We are also encouraged to go back home and find the space and time to implement them,” she continued mentioning.

In the perspective of all participating youngsters and adults, this exchange has been seen as one of the most successful. For the Peres Center and Al Quds, it was very valuable to get to know more about using football in terms of education and social learning skills. KICKFAIR benefited a lot from the Middle East experience on how to use football to promote peace and ease conflicts.

All three organizations are now commonly working on the concrete tasks for the next exchange, which will take place in September 2011 in Israel.