Christmas Souk

The Christmas Souk is a forum for intercultural exchanges, encounters, and dialogues between Northern and Southern countries.
During the year 2021, the Christmas Souk has brought together the Belgian network of the Anna Lindh Foundation, in partnership with the Luxembourg, Tunisian, and Mauritanian networks, as well as professionals from the cultural, social, and associative sectors. A total of twelve organizations attended the project.
The mission of the Christmas Souk is to open a forum for reflection and debate, approached by various means of expression, around the main themes: art and culture, youth, education, gender, and women’s rights.
Themes are at the core values propagated by the Anna Lindh Foundation. Four partner networks from four different countries have worked on these themes.
The « art and culture » – subgroup presented the reflections on cultural rights, access to culture, inclusion and the preservation of cultural diversity, and the findings and results of talk with an audience. The question for the audience was: what is the ideal cultural space that would concretely and materially reflect these rights?
The « youth, education, and teaching » – subgroup investigated difficulties young people encounter in access to sport, culture, and education. How do these issues impact the partner organizations?
The « gender and women’s rights » – subgroup focused on the perception of society and single mothers on single parenthood. Each partnered association collected testimonies from single mothers. The testimonies were an opportunity to discuss the legal framework in the four countries represented. How being a single parent can be a vector of empowerment?