Supported projects

SYRIA - War is not only waged with weapons but also through conflicting ideologies given to children in wartime education. Journalist Pieter Stockmans went to Syria and Turkey and found a struggle for land and values.

In April 2015 it will have been exactly five years since the start of the scandal involving Bruges bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who was accused of having sexually abused several children. In the book Through my fault Machteld Libert, journalist for Flemish public broadcaster VRT, investigates how sexual abuse in the Church could have happened.

BELGIUM - In the past year, a few dozen Muslim youths have left Antwerp for Syria to take part in the war there. Why do young people from Antwerp risk their lives in a gruesome war thousands of kilometres away from home? In De Standaard, Janine Meijer examines the motives of Antwerp jihad fighters.

BELGIUM - How difficult is the balancing act between working on the Flemish labour market and believing in the Islamic god? With that question, Elisabeth Ackaert went to five Muslims living in Belgium.

With its large Islamic population, the majority of which are of Moroccan descent, Brussels has bloomed into Europe’s capital of Islam.

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES - They are omnipresent in the West Bank and they look at you from walls, in bus shelters and on lampposts: the Palestinian martyrs. But what is the context of those decayed Palestinian martyr posters?

It's highly unusual. In October 2012, after years of friendly relations, Margot Vanderstraeten was able to get access to a small group of Antwerp modern-orthodox Jews who started a new life in New York – and don't want to leave. "I truly feel at home here. I can be truly Jewish here, too. And that is something that has never really been possible in Antwerp."

USA - America elects a new president, but what do new Americans like people from Antwerp (Belgium) who started a different life in the States years ago, think about that? For ten weeks journalist Niels Daniel and cameraman Nico Beckers travelled through four American states to find out: New Jersey, Colorado, Georgia and New York. 

This book is based on thirty memorable life stories of youngsters who set out on a walk. How do they remember the trek? How do they look back on it? What did that journey mean for the rest of their lives? Also thirty compagnons voice their thoughts - parents, counselors and juvenile court judges.

Baharak Bashar was thirteen when she fled from Iran to Belgium with her mother. Away from the ayatollah's and their religious narrow-mindedness. Towards the Free West. But half a life later, she goes the other way. Why is she, the militant freethinker, suddenly so interested in the Koran? And what about that young Syrian's statement that in democracies you can talk freely but no one listens?