A gateway
for young
people.
The Gateway Project brings young people together in Pyla — a village whose name means gateway, shared by Greek and Turkish Cypriots inside the UN Buffer Zone. Through sport, intercultural learning and life-skills training, we help young people change how they see themselves, their neighbours and the world.
Pyla 2024 · Tournament
Life skills · Dublin 2025
From a pilot to a movement.
Eight things we believe about young people, places and the slow work of building trust.
01Pyla is a village whose name means gateway.
02Young people are authors, not beneficiaries.
03A football pitch is the simplest diplomatic space we know.
04Change doesn't happen in a seminar room — it happens on a long bus ride.
05Balance isn't a policy. It's built into who sits at every table.
06Every exchange should feed back into the communities that sent them.
07If the Berlin Wall could fall, so can other walls.
08The right relationships, held for twenty years, become infrastructure.
Three pillars, one integrated process.
Sport, non-formal education and intercultural learning — woven together into a single experience that changes what a young person believes is possible.
Sport & teamwork
Football tournaments and mixed teams as the ground for trust — the simplest, most human way to cross a line on a map.
Life skills
Communication, public speaking, problem-solving, digital media and smartphone film-making — skills young people take home and use.
Intercultural learning
Facilitated dialogue, visits to sites of shared history, and real contact with local people from both Cypriot communities.
The village whose name means gateway.
Pyla is one of the only villages in the world where Greek and Turkish Cypriots have lived side-by-side, continuously, through decades of division. It is an EU village, inside the UN Buffer Zone — a place that represents the possibilities inherent in shared spaces.
This geographical and socio-political context is unique in Europe. That's why we chose it as the home of an integrated programme for young people from divided and disadvantaged communities.
A village on a buffer zone, on national television.
Ireland's national broadcaster RTÉ has produced a documentary about Pyla — past, present and future — featuring our youth exchange at its heart. Coming to broadcast in 2026.
If the gates of Northern Ireland could open, and the Berlin Wall could fall, then surely there is hope for our beloved Nicosia. — Marios Christodoulou · Pyla, Cyprus · June 2025
From the field.
35 young people meet in Dublin for a week of life skills.
RTÉ documentary on Pyla heads to broadcast.
Gateway Project (Pyla) Ltd. is formally incorporated.
Open the gateway wider.
We're scaling from two pilot exchanges to an annual programme for 100 young people by 2027. Partners, funders, youth workers, young people — there's a way in for everyone.