By dining together over Skype calls, the students might knock down the cultural and political barriers that divide them. That's the dream of Eric Maddox, founder of the Virtual Dinner Guest initiative. "It is harder to ignore, vilify or harm those with whom we have broken bread," said the 36-year-old American, who has spent the last three months in the tech hub of Bangalore.
Maddox came up with the idea of Virtual Dinner Guest during field research in the West Bank as part of his degree in international conflict resolution. Typically, the groups share a 60- to 90-minute dinner and ask questions, inspired by newspaper articles selected as source material.
While border tension dominates drawing room conversations, the Indian and Pakistani virtual dinner guests spent more time talking about the movies of Shah Rukh Khan. Then, they hit the streets with a handheld camera to interview residents about a topic of their dining partners' choice, the results of which were screened at a second dinner. "We went out exploring places, interacting with all sorts of people from our own communities on a level we normally don't," said Hina Nadir, an engineering student from Islamabad.
The project is funded by private donations and a grant from Skype. Maddox has connected diverse groups in 16 countries so far, using local volunteers to find participants.
The ultimate aim, says Maddox, is to create a database of conversations and street interviews that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world for a "natural culture of solidarity". He is currently filing for non-profit status for the initiative. "It's a way to get an unfiltered set of perspectives on events or communities that often have all kinds of stigma attached to them, or media-reinforced stereotypes."
Maddox, born and raised in California, says he is trying to change participants' relationships with news media from that of passive consumer to "the more active role of producer".
And conflict resolution isn't always the focus. Some of his more unlikely dinners have paired Native American activists with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, or a family from Buenos Aires with a group of women's rights activists in Tunisia. Next stop for Maddox is Cairo, where he will link young Egyptians with a group from the Netherlands. After that, Beirut.
"This is not the kind of thing that I can really retain ownership of for a very long time, once people like the idea," he said. "The market success for this project will be if it gets 'stolen'."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Virtual Dinner Guest,India-Pakistan Diplomacy,Skype calls,Eric Maddox
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