Intercultural Understanding

Aims & objectives

Enabling participants to reflect on:

- What is culture and how does it impacts their decisions and perspectives

- How to understand and relate to other cultures without losing one's own identity and the values that are important to them

- Where prejudice and racism come from

- What kind of impact one can have in promoting and creating the kind of world that they would like to live

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

Trainers were from Holland and Turkey. Participants were from Korea, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Somalia, Turkey, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Latvia

Training methods used & main activities

Ice-breakers, simulation, discussion in small and large groups, input, personal reflection, mime theater.

Outcomes of the activity

The participants gained a greater awareness of other cultures and of what causes stereotypes, misunderstandings, prejudice and racism. They also worked on concrete ways in which they can support intercultural understanding in their own lives, communities, cities and countries. They realized that in order to change the world they needed to begin by changing themselves. You can find the presentation of the workshop at http://www.facebook.com/LeilaniVR under "Intercultural Understanding".

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

I was responsible for the creation and implementation of these workshops (including facilitation and related input) as well as evaluation and reporting. A new method had to be created to suit the objectives as well as the participants' profile. Being from a multi-cultural background also contributed to the success of the workshop.

I worked on this training for 4 days as a full time trainer.