The Human Family Boat as a proposed project is part of the Human Family Initiative of The Intercivil Society. The idea was inspired by and based upon the experience of the Japanese organisation called Peace Boat www.peaceboat.org and the Intercultural Communication and Leadership School (ICLS) www.intercivilization.net. Peaceboat is the civil society liaison for East Asia in the framework of the United Nations Global Compact; the ICLS was recognised by the European Union in 2006 as best practice in active citizenship and intercultural dialogue. The proposed project is a combination of tested methodologies and expertise of the two respective organisations. The project is designed to translate shared values of Peace Boat and the ICLS into positive relations between people from different religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

The Human Family Boat would be an actual ship (Boat) carrying people across the Eastern hemisphere as an Asia - Europe axis of civic peace. The journey would start from England and finish in Indonesia, travelling through part of the North Atlantic, Gibraltar, the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. During this journey, the Boat would stop in such cities where the need for improving local community relations is recognized by local people. Some of these suggested Asian and European cities already held ICLS seminars and formed Networks of Trust in recent years. During each stop an intercultural communication and leadership (ICLS) seminar would be held in the given city, bringing together locally resident talented young adults with leadership potential from the different local ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. The Boat would play a key role in concluding the local seminar before it sails away and leaves behind the local Network of Trust, composed of seminar participants. The Network of Trust would continue working for community cohesion in the city and would be connected with other such local networks elsewhere, in particular along the route of the Boat. Members of the networks might join The Intercivil Society.

Objectives

• To drop the seeds of a new generation of intercultural civic leadership, firmly committed to peaceful solutions, in cities finding themselves on the frontlines of ethnic, religious, cultural or inter-communal tensions throughout the eastern hemisphere;
• To connect such new and committed civic leadership throughout the route of the Boat with a sense of community in the universal interest;
• To contribute to the development of a new culture of communication and leadership in addressing diversity, based on the concept that we are all equal members of the 7 billion person strong one human family.

• About 200 young and connected intercultural leaders from about 12 cities/countries along the Boat's route who initiate local and international civic cooperation across lines of existing ethnic, religious and cultural divisions;
• National and international media present at arrival and departure of the Boat in all cities;
• A television documentary, distributed internationally, about the 'Voyage', the participating people on the Boat and in the cities and the new positive energies released by the project;
• A new dimension of a global Network of Trust by young adults for intercultural communication and leadership.