General

CCIF Malta – Cooperation is the key to success


By
Denise Nanni and Milena Rampoldi, ProMosaik. Let us move to Malta to continue our multicultural voyage to discover new organisations around the world to
talk to Hedwig of CCIFMT. We asked her
about the objectives of her organisation, focussing on peace and intercultural
understanding. Would like to thank Hedwig for her answers and for the photos
she sent us. Cooperation is the key to success. This is a principle ProMosaik
shares with CCIFMT. 
How
was CCIF founded and which are the objectives or your organisation?
Cross Culture
International Foundation was registered on 30 June 2012. The following is a
brief description of who we are and what we do:
Cross
Culture International Foundation (CCIF Malta) provides services that enhance
international understanding, integration, and inclusion. It also offers support
services to develop our communities and improve the quality of life. CCIF
promotes volunteering for sustainable development. We work with youths coming from
diverse backgrounds, and endeavour to meet the needs of our communities through
voluntary activities. By promoting inclusion, acceptance, understanding and
mutual respect, our programs make a vital contribution to peace and sustainable
development. The organisation is a source of knowledge and advice on the
importance of social cohesion and change management. We aim to engage and
positively influence youths through our youth based programmes. We work to
equip, up-skill, and build competences in youths so that they actively
participate in issues affecting their lives, the EU and its Member States. CCIF
exists to make a difference in the communities where we operate in, through a
number of well thought out humanitarian initiatives.  We are involved
in upholding law and justice, human rights, intercultural existence through
projects and initiatives that enhance the lives of those in our community. CCIF
works in partnerships and collaborations with other NGOs and stakeholders in
areas that help attain our objectives. Partnership is crucial to the success of
all CCIF’s activities. From our offices in Malta, we are linked to a
multi-disciplinary network of organisations carefully selected over the years
and the combined professional experiences and resources we share to attain our
organizational objectives.
What
are your main initiatives?
We work
with young people and we organize youth exchanges to tackle issues that affect
them. We also work on issues related to human trafficking, educating the
society through awareness raising campaigns. We also tackle issues that are
prevalent in the community we live in through initiatives that involves the
community in bringing lasting solutions.
How
civil society has been responsove so far?
The civil
society has been very responsive to our initiatives through volunteerism and
resources to help in our causes.
According
to your experience, what is the best way in order to promote the participation
and intercultural understanding?
We have
been running a project on multicultural dialogue in order to tackle issues in
the community brought about by diversity. Our project has been using food, arts
and cultural dressing as means of engaging the different cultural groups during
the multicultural dialogues. We believe in mutual respect of all persons and in
their active  participation in the community, so multicultural dialogue is
one such means of engaging people from diverse backgrounds and involving them
in shaping their community.
Do
you cooperate with any local authority or institution? If yes, how?
We believe
in partnership and are ardent believers in working in collaboration with others
hence we work with local authorities, partner ngos and individual institutions
in reaching our goals as an organization. We also believe that our success as
an organization is achieved through working with and through others.