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WASHINGTON, Sep 3 (OneWorld) - Ordinary Americans are being encouraged to engage in intercultural exchanges and discussions about globally significant issues as part of a new initiative to counter terrorism worldwide.

© C-SPANAt least 20 town-hall meetings will be held across the United States in the coming months as part of the "Safer, More Compassionate World" forum series.

"Few contributions are more important than those of ordinary citizens in building a safe and compassionate world," said Our Voices Together (OVT) co-founder Eugene Steuerle, launching the first of the forums, in Washington, DC Thursday.

Steuerle's group, a non-profit network started by family and friends of those who died on September 11, 2001, is sponsoring the forum series in an effort to "explore comprehensive approaches to counter-terrorism beyond governmental policies and actions."

The group says it will "highlight ways citizens can engage constructively in what the 9/11 Commission termed the 'Agenda of Opportunity': education, employment, and the possibility for a brighter tomorrow."

Steurele's wife, Norma, died on American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Steurele and his daughters used the federal compensation funds they received to launch the charity.

Thursday's forum opener brought international journalists together with U.S. press and others to discuss "citizen diplomacy," which organizers termed "one of the most difficult yet important" ways of fighting terrorism on a global scale.

The international journalists, who hailed from Egypt, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Brazil, stressed the capacity of individuals to reverse negative stereotypes and misconceptions that generate national and international acts of terrorism.

Shamim Ashraf of Bangladesh's Daily Star newspaper emphasized the importance of initiating discussions among people from different countries and religions to reinforce ideas such as the one that "not all Muslims are terrorists."

His Egyptian colleague Amr Emam noted that leaving his hometown of Cairo to work in the United States had challenged his own preconceptions of America and the American people.

Similarly, Kenyan Mugumo Munene recalled the lasting impression a Kansas City teacher and her students made on him during his fellowship at the Kansas City Star newspaper this year.

When Cynthia Bender invited the journalist to speak to her high school class about Kenya, it became evident to Munene that the students were quite ill-informed about his country and the continent of Africa.

Bender's initiative, however, helped to overturn this ignorance, Munene observed, urging others to engage in dialogue with people from different backgrounds.

© Our Voices TogetherOVT said their forums should "generate a less fearful, more informed public discussion about the predominant threat to the security of the United States" ahead of the November 2008 elections.

The group also hopes to promote volunteering, global philanthropy, and international exchanges in an effort to generate a more positive image of Americans worldwide.

The group has sponsored U.S. delegations to build schools and homes abroad, connected U.S. students with "sister schools" in Afghanistan, and helped raise money to support former child slaves in India.

"Effective counter-terrorism requires more than military force, intelligence, and security measures since these efforts, while significant, do little to diminish extremists' popular appeal," the group said on its Web site, adding: "terrorists lose their ability to coerce if they cannot recruit."

Forum events will be held on or around September 11 in Atlanta, Georgia; Duluth, Minnesota; Louisville, Kentucky; and Tyler, Texas. Other events will be held through December in Atlanta and Winona, Minnesota, as well as in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, and Ohio.

The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan group promoting citizens' participation in government, is co-sponsoring the forum series.

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