“If wars begin in the minds of men it is the minds of children that the defences of peace must be erected,” (Unesco). This might have been the source of inspiration for this project initiated by the Rotary Club of Port-Louis in 2000. As a young teacher at the beginning of the sixties, Claude Obeegadoo always dreamed of bringing people closer through a sharing of cultures. He managed to make it a reality forty years later for five years. But since September 2005, the project has been frozen even if he remains hopeful that it will get going again soon.

“The sixties were quite a troubled period, as we were going towards independence and intellectuals wondered which culture would prevail to become the Mauritian culture,” Claude Obeegadoo remembers. But the idea was not for one culture to prevail but for all cultures to coexist with close links between them and there was a need to point at the similarities between all Mauritians. He could not implement such a project at that time but the Rotary

Club later managed to initiate the project based on intercultural relationships.

<I>The project aimed at initiating a dynamic sharing of cultures among primary school children through participation in an annual intercultural show-cum-exhibition focusing on the major festivals of the Mauritian calendar on a single occasion.</I>

In fact, the project aimed at initiating a dynamic sharing of cultures among primary school children through participation in an annual intercultural show-cum-exhibition focusing on the major festivals of the Mauritian calendar celebrated on a single occasion. Instead of seizing all opportunities to celebrate each religious festival separately, the objective was to put them all together in order to point at similarities and common values shared by all Mauritians.

So, they started with two schools and year by year, many other schools were added to the list to finally achieve a total of about fifty schools. Rotary Clubs throughout the island chose one or two schools every year to join the annual festivity. All heads of schools, teachers, parents and pupils were delighted with this project, as children obviously had fun doing such activities.

They always found time for the preparatory programme that was spread over several months even though it was not part of the curriculum. The series of activities combined talks, research, visits, data collection and presentation with a set of artistic, intellectual and practical activities.

As the educational system has always been focused on exams, children do not often have the opportunity to do fun activities. As art is not an examinable subject, they do not always take the time to do it. Therefore, they were even happier with this project.

Mauritius is a rainbow nation,with pacific coexistence between all communities. The “loudspeaker” incident however points at the fragility of the diverse identity of Mauritius. “There is no immediate remedy to an issue such as this. Children of today are the ones who will shape the Mauritius of tomorrow and they should be given the tools to understand each other and learn to have an interest in others,” comments Claude Obeegadoo. Little initiatives like this one could well help to gradually knock barriers down.

Ignorance of others’ cultures may lead to suspicion, apprehension, fear and even confrontation in some cases. This is why it is not only important for children to discover the beauty of the literature, music and festivities of others’ cultures but also their in-depth values. This is why the project was intended to develop and grow to extend to the secondary level.

But despite minister Gokhool’s acknowledgment that activities, fun and pleasure have their role to play in quality education, the ministry has not given its assent for the project to move on in state schools. But the Rotary Club of Port-Louis is still hoping that it might get under way once more in 2008…