Today, at the closing session of the World Forum for Democracy, the Council of Europe announced that the winner of its Democracy Innovation Award was the Swedish initiative More Than One Story.

More Than One Story is a powerful card game building bridges between people of all ages, backgrounds and cultures. It has proved to be a valuable tool for teachers, social workers, religious leaders, event co-ordinators and youth leaders. Wherever fears and prejudices keep people who seem different isolated, this card game awakens compassion; it brings together people who do not know each other in over 20 countries to work for a more harmonious world.

Three initiatives out of the 30 or so presented at the Forum were shortlisted for the final vote:

• The Civil Society Coalition on Oil and Gas, Water Governance Institute (Uganda) – lab 4
• Anti-prejudice training in prisons (Greece) – lab 8
• “More than one story”, Department of Culture and Leisure of the Municipality of Simrishamn, (Sweden) – lab 11

The award was presented by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland.

The Forum brought together 160 speakers from 60 countries and 2,000 participants from 100 countries who discussed practical initiatives to address the challenge of “Freedom versus control”.

The theme of the 2016 World Forum for Democracy will be: “education: the new social divide”.