Values and culture

Description of the tool

1/ This session have started with ‘Abigael’ activity (see T-Kit on Intercultural learning, p.56-7). (Here copy in French from T-Kit apprestissage interculturel)
Every participant receives a copy of the story of Abigael. Then different steps should be followed:
- after reading the story individually, every participant has to rank the each character (Abigael, Tom, Sinbad, Abigael’s mother, and John) according to their behaviour;
- they go in groups of 5-6 people and should come to a collective agreement (everybody need to agree!)
- in plenary we collect the results and start the debriefing:
How was it? Was it easy or difficult to come to a common agreement? Why? How was the decision making process? Why did we do this exercise? What is a value?
2/ Connection between values and cultures: values are one of the pillars of our culture. Presentation of other pillars (symbols like language, objects, flags, clothes / rituals like wedding, ways of socialisation…)
3/ What is culture? What elements are behind this concept? Visible and Hidden elements : Presentation of the iceberg (T-Kit, p. 19)
4/ Our culture, where does it come from? The different levels of culture (national, regional, religious, generational, social, professional…)