Koerswijziging.nl is a web-based initative of a small group young persons of Moroccan origin in the Netherlands. This initiative was started in order to counter the increasingly negative image of Moroccan persons in the Dutch mainstream media and the current political discourse. In a climate where it has become routine to make the entire Moroccan community of a city responsible for the misbehavior of individuals with a Moroccan background and where representatives of the Dutch social democratic party (PvdA) can refer to Moroccans as 'kut Marokkanen' (shit-Moroccans) without any consequences and very little public reaction, the initiators of this website 'rely on the ability of the Moroccan community' in order to create a positive image of the third-largest immigrant community in the Netherlands.

With koerswijziging.nl the initiators do not aim at creating another institution that claims to represent the Moroccans that have chosen to live in the Netherlands. Instead the whole project is set up to be active for only half a year. Opened on the 16th of January 2003 in Amsterdam, the initiators are planning different events in 11 cities over the following 6-months. This chain of events dubbed 'elfstedentocht' after the most important social and sportive event in the Netherlands (the original elfstedentocht is a 200+ km long ice skating race that is held on the canals linking 11 cities in the Dutch province of Friesland) started in Amsterdam with an action where Moroccan youths tried to motivate passers-by to take part in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Subsequent actions have taken place in Haarlem, den Bosch where the participants offered workshops to the patients and their parents in the local children's hospital.

Reports of these activities are collected on the website www.koerswijziging.nl. The central element of this Website is a manifesto presented by the initiators, wherein they explain their motivation for their action and urge both Moroccans and the rest of the Dutch society to stop making the imagined collective of 'the Moroccans' responsible for an increasing number of problems and undesired aspects of the current Dutch society. While their actions often stress the aspect of citizenship, it is not the intention of the initiators to prove that they have successfully been 'integrated' into the rest of Dutch society. With their actions they rather intend to emancipate themselves form a situation where they are forced to react to an increasing stream of negative coverage. By taking the initiative into their own hands they hope to gaine influence in shapeing the image of the Moroccan Community in the Netherlands.

This manifest itself can be signed on the website. When it was first posted on the website on the 16th of January it listed the names of 49 initial signatories. At the time of writing (16th of February) the manifest had been signed by 4251 individuals from all over the Netherlands.