Cyprus Update: Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci to meet informally on Thursday in a bi-communal event

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci are expected to meet informally on Thursday since last week fuss over Akincis invitation to a UN event in Istanbul, which led to the suspension of a planned meeting last Friday.
Both leaders will attend an event organized by the bi communal technical committee on education that they set up scheduled to hold on Thursday at the Home for Cooperation in the Green Line in Nicosia with students from both side of the divide in attendance.
President of the committee Michalinos Zempylas  who is  a Greek Cypriot told the Cyprus News Agency the event would involve 50 students from each communitiy aged 11-12.
The even which will begin at 8am, the children will be divided into small mixed groups and each group will go through workshops on theatre, music, art and traditional games. Each workshop will be run by a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot teacher experienced in bi-communal workshops.
The two leaders, to be accompanied by their wives, are expected to arrive at around 11am and will visit the various workshops and talk to the students. The event will end at 12.15pm.

Zempylas said: this was the first event being held by the committee as a pilot scheme.

“Our approach is step by step, try some pilot programmes to see where there are weaknesses and then improve these before going to the next step,”.

Children, he said, would speak in their native language, while the two teachers will translate for them where necessary.

“But at this stage it is not so much speech plays a role,” he said. “Children always find ways to understand each other, sometimes better than adults where language in our experience doesn’t have to be an obstacle, and the nature of the activities we choose, ie games etc., do not require such high language requirements that it will make it difficult for the children to communicate,” he added.

One of the objectives is to help them understand that the two communities share many common words, shared songs and games.
Source: CyprusMail