The Arab-West Foundation was established in 2005 to encourage and promote tolerance, understanding and dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim communities and societies as well as the Arab and Western Worlds. It cooperates with the Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Translation Ltd and the Center for Arab-West Understanding NGO in Egypt in building and developing Dialogue Across Borders, a database for intercultural dialogue for students/researchers, journalists, dialogue workers worldwide.
The database of 50,000+ articles and reports were built in past decades with hundreds of student interns and translators and is unique since these data zoom in on interreligious and intercultural events and tensions that nowhere else is available. The Foundation is working with a network of universities on transferring the database to a university library for long term preservation.
In July 2024, the Arab-West Foundation was elected Head of the Dutch network of the Anna Lindh Foundation (ALF) with all EU and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries as member. The ALF promotes “intercultural and civil society dialogue in the face of growing mistrust and polarization.” Each member country has a network of civil society organizations that are all committed to dialogue. The ALF knows no membership fee but expects its members to be actively involved in dialogue for which sometimes small grants are available.
In 2024-2025, the main task is to revitalize the network, build on the thematic priorities the previous Head of Network identified, focus on increasing youth involvement, identify peace builders that can contribute to an end of the current Israeli-Palestinian war and how network members can contribute to peace building. To this end, various activities will be organized, such as providing information via a newsletter and LinkedIn group, regular physical network meetings, social events and possibly setting up projects or capacity building activities.
