Mondialogo

Mondialogo is a partnership initiated by Daimler and UNESCO in October 2003 to promote intercultural dialogue among young people. It consists of two international competitions for high school and university students and has reached more than 100.000 young people from 140 countries.

Teenagers and young adults from all parts of the world meet at Mondialogo’s multilinguistic website, form transcontinental teams and work on joint projects: Japanese and Turks develop an educational game on emergency response to natural disasters. A team from South Africa and Australia works on a HIV-AIDS educational program. Students from the US and Iran overcome even virtual barriers. Although the email connection between the two countries was hampered, friends and relatives in Bolivia and Pakistan helped them to get in touch and elaborate their project on sustainable water supply.

Mondialogo effectively contributes to quality education in many countries and to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, especially sustainable development and poverty reduction to improve the quality of life in the developing world. Within the UN system, Mondialogo is considered best practice for Public-Private-Partnerships.

The Mondialogo initiative is based on three components:

Enlarge In 2006, the second Mondialogo School Contest concluded with a symposium in Rome, Italy. Over 35,000 students in 2,600 teams from 138 countries participated in this contest, twice as many as during the first Mondialogo School Contest in 2003/04, in which already 25,000 students from 126 countries had participated.

The Mondialogo School Contest addresses students aged between 14 and 18. Paired with a partner school from a different continent, the teams develop joint projects on issues such as racism, stereotypes, cultural identity and globalization.

During the project work, the teams go through different processes in which they explore both their own and their partner team’s culture. The aim is to convey values such as respect, tolerance and mutual understanding.

The winner in 2006 was a team from Italian/Indonesia who jointly organized school lessons for street children in Jakarta, Indonesia. The inauguration of the school was in May 2007. During an Award Ceremony, an international jury awarded the prizes – 500 euros, 1,000 euros and 1,500 euros, respectively – to the best three teams.

Registration for the third Mondialogo School Contest started on 21 May 2007, the UN World Day for Cultural Diversity and is possible until 1 November 2007.

Enlarge   The winning team from Indonesia and Italy organised the construction of a school for scavenger children in Indonesia The Mondialogo Engineering Award, the second project component, addresses engineering students from developing and developed countries. They are invited to join forces and to develop ideas for the sustainable improvement of the quality of life as well as for fighting poverty in developing countries. This includes issues such as medical care, nutrition, housing, energy, mobility, communication and the development of natural resources.

The Mondialogo Engineering Award was organized for the first time in 2004/2005 with 1,700 students from 79 nations participating. The second award contest started in November 2006, with 809 registered project ideas from 89 countries. After a six-month period, the international teams will have to submit their results. A high-ranking jury will evaluate all project proposals and select the winners of the Mondialogo Engineering award, endowed with a total of 300,000 euros.

Among the 2005 winners was a German/Malian team who had installed solar systems for health care centers and had thus been instrumental in improving the electricity supply and, consequently, medical care in Mali. A team from the USA and from India developed a water treatment plant for the village of Ashoknagar in West Bengal, India, which purifies water contaminated with arsenic and thereby makes its usable by the population again.

The two competitions – Mondialogo School Contest and Mondialogo Engineering Award – are complemented by a third project component, the Mondialogo Internet Portal.

This is a communication and information platform in five languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian) with a community of almost 30,000 registered users and over 1,350 visitors per day.

With its individual projects, Mondialogo promotes the peaceful coexistence of all cultures and religions around the world and has reached out to a large number of different people ever since its foundation. Mondialogo is an essential part of Daimler's social responsibility, aiming at giving globalization a human face.