The United Buddy Bears Project that promotes tolerance, understanding and peace among nations will shortly arrive in Old Havana’s San Francisco or San Francis Square.

The project consists of hundreds of natural size bears that will be on display at the city’s historical section as of January 16th. In 2001 Eva and Klaus Herlitz created the Buddy bear, the sculpture of a bear made of synthetic materials reinforced with fiber glass, in close cooperation with Austrian sculptor, Roman Strobl. The sculptor and the Buddy bear creators came up with a bigger idea one year later in one Austrian city square: United Buddy Bears circle which began an extensive world tour.

Each bear represents one United Nations member nation, an artist of which designs a bear for the occasion. More than 30 million people from all over the world have been able to watch what is also known as “the art of tolerance.” Important cities, such as Vienna, Cairo, Jerusalem, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Paris, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Tokyo, Sydney, Warsaw, Rio de Janeiro, and others, have been the venues of the traveling exhibition supported by the United Nations Organization –the UN- and the United Nations Children’s Fund –UNICEF.

One of the bear has been created by a Cuban artist for the Havana exhibit, on the occasion of which the city’s historian office has scheduled cultural activities during January, February and March.