AFS Intercultural Programs is pleased to announce the January/February/March/April 2013 issue of AFS Intercultural Link Newsletter volume 4, issue 1 – Global Edition, which can be shared with everyone interested in learning more about intercultural education.

The AFS Intercultural Link News Magazine is the quarterly magazine on intercultural learning in the AFS Network. The magazine features content shared by the Intercultural Learning Work Group as well as other AFS Partners and guest writers, including information on trends in intercultural education, interviews with experts in the field and overviews of upcoming and previous conferences.

Anna Collier (AFS International) presenting a poster on the AFS Intercultural Link Learning Program at the NAFSA (Association of International Educators) Annual Conference in Houston, Texas USA in June 2012.

We hope you will find this new section of our blog helpful for your work and that you will benefit from attending events where you can meet like-minded professionals, make new contacts and learn about the topics interesting to you. As an inspiration, we are sharing with you what conferences we are planning to attend.

All the listed events are organized or co-organized by international platforms, think-tanks, universities and international organizations, including AFS. Is your event missing? Let us know! We are updating this list weekly, so in case you have a suggestion for an interesting conference that we should add, please leave your idea in a comment. We will be happy to add it to our list.

Everyone who participated in the IDD made wonderful contributions to furthering the awareness of intercultural learning. As well, many stayed connected through IDD’s facebook page, which is where the winners of the photo and video contest were announced. Congratulations to the winners from AFS Hungary and AFS Russia!

Watch the best video and see the best picture on the IDD facebook page!

The Winter Academy on Intercultural Competence will not only present theoretical frameworks regarding intercultural learning, but also practical competencies and knowledge, to enable participants to work as intercultural trainers themselves in the future.

All courses will include workshop sessions with both theoretical and practical content offered by academic professors and AFS trainers. This collaboration will bridge the gap between theory and practice!

The Winter Academy addresses people who are interested in teaching intercultural competence themselves. Such as:

• Students with an intercultural area of studies or/and their own international experiences, who would like to pass their theoretical knowledge through practical trainings.
• Trainers, who have already gathered experience and would like to start working in an intercultural context.
• Young professionals and/or multipliers, who are committed or devoted to intercultural learning, e.g. teachers or practitioners in the field of international youth work.

Enrolled students have the opportunity to obtain 5 European Credit Points (ECTS) for participating in the first seven course days. This is a standardization of higher education within the European Union that accumulates points which lead to the completion of a degree. One year of coursework usually counts for 60 points.

As well, after participating in the entire duration of the Winter Academy (10 course days), participants will be awarded the certificate “Intercultural Trainer” issued by Jacobs University and InterCultur gGmbH.

The Winter Academy offers a great opportunity for people who are involved in (intercultural) training activities. Through the Winter Academy, AFS will not only give students the opportunity for a diverse intercultural education experience, but will also demonstrate our competence at a university level and confirm our identity as an educational organization.

The registration deadline is 15 November 2012. If you have any questions regarding the program, please contact Barbara Langholf (Barbara.Langholf@intercultur.de).

Examples include AFS Boznia and Herezgovina who offered a screening of the movie “East is East” in Banja Luca. AFS Latvia partnered with the Central Baltic INTERREG project “Youth Space”, holding a seminar in Riga about Intercultural learning, including team-building activities, discussions, and experience sharing from exchange students. These are among the many activities centered around IDD. You can also check out the map of Intercultural Dialogue Day events around Europe, or look forward to photos and comments posted on Intercultural Dialogue Day’s Facebook page.

EFIL also just opened the IDD Best Video and Best Photo contest that will extend until 14 October 2012. AFS volunteers are invited to post photos and videos of their IDD events on the Wall of the Face Book page, together with the description of the IDD event itself. It is very important that each video and picture submitted for the contest is accompanied by a description of the IDD event. For each of the two categories, the submission that receives the most votes – “Likes” – will win a free registration for one volunteer team member at the EFIL Volunteer Summer Summit 2013. Inspired by the top three finalists in each category (photo and video), EFIL will develop ‘IDD toolkits’ that will be replicable by volunteers across Europe in the next edition of the IDD. Be sure to enter with what you were doing on Intercultural Dialogue Day!

This year’s conference took place in Moscow, Russia on the 18^th of August, and was held at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. It is one of the three conferences that together make up the AISEC International Congress, an international event to plan projects for social and economic development. At the Global Youth Voice event, two AFS staff members had the opportunity to take a more active role and act as facilitators for one of the sessions.

Tom McLeod, an AFS returnee (Australia 2000-2001) and current Intern at the AFS Russia office in Moscow, along with Nonna Kovrizhnykh, Partner Director of AFS Russia, and Organisational Development Coordinator Natalia Zakharova facilitated a session on Intercultural Dialogue and Tolerance. The 10-day conference hopes to foster a positive global impact in the way youth collaborate and interact, and aims to build a global perspective for future generations.

AFS Intercultural Programs is pleased to announce the July/August/September 2012 issue of AFS Intercultural Link Newsletter volume 3, issue 3 – Global Edition, which can be shared with everyone interested in learning more about intercultural education.

The AFS Intercultural Link Newsletter is the quarterly newsletter on intercultural learning in the AFS Network. The newsletter features content shared by the Intercultural Learning Work Group as well as other AFS Partners and guest writers, including information on trends in intercultural education, interviews with experts in the field and overviews of upcoming and previous conferences.

AFS Intercultural Programs is pleased to announce the April/May/June 2012 issue of AFS Intercultural Link, AFS Intercultural Link Global v.3 i.2, which can be shared with anyone interested in learning more about intercultural education.

The AFS Intercultural Link Newsletter is the quarterly newsletter on intercultural learning in the AFS Network. The newsletter features content shared by the Intercultural Learning Work Group as well as other AFS Partners and guest writers, including information on trends in intercultural education, interviews with experts in the field and overviews of upcoming and previous conferences.

The ICL Team at AFS International has recently uploaded a new video presenting the 2012 Intercultural Link Initiatives. In a dialogue, Laura Kline-Taylor and Vincenzo Morlini, President & CEO of AFS Intercultural Programs, discuss the current opportunities that exist for the AFS Network and for Friends of AFS.

The Intercultural Link Initiatives include the following materials and tools:

• The Intercultural Link Newsletter
• The ICL …for AFSers and ICL …for friends of AFS Document Series
• The Intercultural Link Initiative website which offers resources and advice from experts in the intercultural field
• The digital library with materials that can be used by registered AFS Volunteers and Staff
• The ICL blog (this one!)
• The Intercultural Link Learning Program, the training and assessment Program  taking place in five regions around the world in 2012.