Tag Archives: Cross-cultural communicator

Intercultural Link News Magazine v4 i1 – Global Edition

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The newest edition of the Intercultural Link News Magazine has just been launched. Read it on-line or download it here. Enjoy!

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.

Education & Intercultural Learning Communications Fellowship – Apply Now!

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AFS Intercultural Programs (www.afs.org) seeks an individual with excellent public relations and marketing communications skills – strategic, creative and production – and a strong interest in working across cultures for a fellowship within our Education and Intercultural Learning (ICL) Department.

AFS ICL Library

Tasks related to this fellowship include:

  • Supporting the Education team’s communications and media strategy: internal stakeholder communications as well as working on an external media plan that includes social/digital media (www.afs.org/blog/icl, our digital library, Facebook), conferences, etc.
  • Managing the AFS Intercultural Link News Magazine: coordinating article submissions with authors from around the world, writing (as appropriate), editing and proof reading articles, contributing to design and layout, finalizing production and distributing to our global readership.
  • Plus additional responsibilities related to education and intercultural learning in AFS as a part of a team comprised of fun and passionate people who work to help people improve interactions across cultures.

Skills: For this fellowship, candidates should:

  • Have strong communications skills from strategy development to content creation (especially writing) to production (digital and otherwise);
  • Have excellent planning and organizational skills with high attention to detail;
  • Be highly creative, solutions-oriented, and pro-active;
  • Have basic or better design sensibilities & layout skills;
  • Be technology-savvy and able to work in various online and digital environments;
  • Be interested in intercultural communications, global skills development and/or international relations and education;
  • Be able to work both independently and as a part of a collaborative team;
  • Have excellent spoken *and* written English skills (fluency two or more languages preferred);
  • Familiarity with AFS or intercultural exchange programs a plus, but not required.

The fellowship is full-time for a commitment of 9 to 12 months. It is based at AFS Intercultural Programs’ offices in NYC, covers some expenses and provides a stipend.

Intercultural Link Newsletter Magazine

If you meet these requirements and are interested in applying for the fellowship, please e-mail AFS International at icl@afs.org. Provide a brief description of yourself, examples of how you meet the listed requirements for this fellowship, your motivations for applying for this fellowship, and what you could bring to this fellowship. In addition, please attach a current resume and two writing samples in the form of a newsletter article and/or blog entry.

We regret we cannot reply to all inquiries.

AFS is an international, voluntary, non-governmental, non-profit organization that provides intercultural learning opportunities to help people develop the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to create a more just and peaceful world.

Winter Academy on Intercultural Competence – Register Now!

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The end of 2012 doesn’t mean the end of intercultural learning opportunities! Students in many places around the world may have a break from classes, but experiential learning outside the classroom is at the heart of the AFS experience! To this end, the first Winter Academy on Intercultural Competence organized by InterCultur gGmbH (the non-profit subsidiary of AFS Germany which was founded in the beginning of this year) and Jacobs University will take place in January 2013, and hopes to encourage and develop intercultural competence, knowledge and skills! The Winter Academy will take place 14-25 January on the campus of Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany.

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).

Language + Culture with VWZ Roeland

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Intercultural Learning is becoming increasingly recognized as a necessary piece of how modern, global citizens are educated. Some argue that a necessary characteristic of all global citizens is the ability to communicate in a language other than the native tongue. As many languages correspond with one or more cultures and fluency in a specific language could imply competence in a society and culture that speaks that language. To separate the two institutions of language and intercultural learning is to ignore a critical aspect of culture.

Roeland, a Belgian non-profit company promoting language skills in youth, seems to agree. In cooperation with AFS International, Roeland and AFS Partners in Argentina, China, Finland and Switzerland, provided the first group of students to participate in a full English language immersion camp that carried an intercultural component in the United Kingdom this summer.

The aim of this pilot was to test alternative ways of delivering short language programs with an extra focus on intercultural learning, while also being targeted toward a younger age group. Sixteen AFSers between the ages of 13-16 spent 12 days with 50 Belgian students in Sutton Valence, England to gain both linguistic and cultural knowledge. Apart from participating in intensive English language lessons, there were a number of activities, workshops and sport opportunities focusing on ICL, a trip to London and various daily themes such as British Day, Rhythm and Rhyme Day or Fame day. Throughout the camp, students had to follow a very strict “English-only!” rule.

Belgian and AFS Student Participants

Three very dedicated AFS volunteers: Jens Poulsen (AFS Switzerland), Sonja Gustafsson (AFS Finland) and Meng Zhou (AFS China) took charge in bringing the intercultural learning component into action, helped to deal with support issues throughout the camp and supported various other activities at the camp. The work of these volunteers showed how cooperation with like-minded organizations can help us to further the AFS mission of providing intercultural learning opportunities.

AFS International is now in the process of evaluating this pilot program in the hopes of using lessons learned to design a format for possible future collaboration. In the meantime, we hope that this was an opportunity for the almost 70 young students to get a taste of the life-long intercultural learning path, one that has inspired them to explore further avenues with AFS programs and other language-learning organizations.

Connecting Young People Worldwide | The GNG Youtube Channel

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The Youtube channel of the Global Nomads Group (GNG), an NGO that fosters intercultural dialogue and understanding amongst the world’s youth, offers 272 free videos that portray how young people from all over the world live, what they think, and how they discuss and cooperate with others from different countries. Many of the videos show how groups of young people (usually secondary school classes) from two completely different countries meet each other, listen to each other, and learn about each other’s realities through online classroom exchange, known as Exchange 2.0. Many other videos also show interviews with young people and portraits of their lives in the US, Uganda, Haiti, Spain, Vietnam, and many other countries.

AFS-USA, AFS Indonesia, AFS Malaysia and the US Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam have cooperated with GNG for a media literacy project called the Global Connections: one LENS program. This program is sponsored through the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Through this project, opportunities were offered to students and educators from Indonesia, Malaysia, the United States, and Vietnam to develop their media skills and to get to know each other better through working towards a common goal. The students met online (through video conferences and social networking), and later also in person. The project ended with a local media festival, where students had the opportunity to showcase their public service announcements or digital stories. On the Youtube channel below, you can find videos that were taken during the completion of this project.

This cooperation of AFS and the Global Nomads Group was a big success. It has become more and more common for us, especially for young people, to connect to others via online tools and video conferences. AFS and the Global Nomads Group have pioneered in the area of facilitating youth exchange using these tools, and their positive and very successful experience lets us hope that there is more to come in this area.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking

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In a recent TED talk conference, Susan Cain, author of the book Quiet – The Power of Introverts makes a case for acknowledging the power and contributions of introverts. Many introverts have a rich inner world and Cain acknowledges that they do not show themselves outwardly simply because they work best in quiet environments and don’t feel the need to self-promote. Cain suggests that introverts not be confused as being shy, as shyness is linked to a fear of social judgement. Being introverted, she says, is related to the environments in which a person feels they can do their best work and be most authentic.

Cain identifies as an introvert, and she describes often having forced herself to be extroverted having learned that some of American society may not value individuals who hesitate to communicate their knowledge, skills, and ideas. She passionately argues for accepting these differences and acknowledging the introverts around us (1 out of every 3 people is introverted). If we do so we may see that introverts have qualities that many extroverts lack; they are often strong team leaders, because they let people run with their ideas, instead of constantly talking about them or taking over with their own ideas.

Her book can make us think about how we may have a bias towards paying attention to those who talk most frequently or articulately, instead of carefully listening to all who are around us. She also encourages us to reflect on how we can create the space for quieter people to share their ideas.

Susan Cain entertains the notion of the extrovert ideal, a notion which she points out is evident in US American culture. Is this also a reality in all national cultures? Cain’s book includes a chapter that asks this very question: Do all cultures have an extrovert ideal? In many East Asian classrooms, she says, the curriculum is focused away from talking, and emphasizes listening, writing, and memorization for the learners and reserving the talking for the teachers.

As AFSers, many of us live our lives outwardly and easily connect to many people in many places around the world. We are curious about and restlessly question the world around us in order to learn about the lives of others. If we remember to remain open in these intercultural contexts and to listen and observe the opinions and messages that come through in quieter, more hidden forms we can learn a lot about others and about ourselves – we may even make more of the experience.

Recommendations for Building Interculturally Competent Leaders

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In a recent issue of IIE Networker, a publication by the Institute of International Education, Darla Deardorff, Executive Director of the Association of International Education Administrators and editor of The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (2010) offers advice on how to make our lives and those of others as successful and enriching as possible in an article on Building Intercultural Competence:

To build interculturally competent leaders, she says, we need to be mindful of the following:

1. Our intercultural attitudes: how open am I truly towards those from different cultural, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds? Do I make quick assumptions about a person? Do I prejudge or do I try to explore all facets of the situation?

2. Our intercultural knowledge and awareness: am I aware of my own cultural conditioning? Can I describe the cultural values that impact my behavior and judgment, and how I communicate? Am I aware of the different worldviews of those I work or live with, and of how they are different from my own perspective?

3. Our intercultural skills: do I actively observe the subtle nuances of my and other’s interactions?  Do I reflect on how I interact with those I work or live with? Do I seek to understand the reasons for the incidents I experience, and what I can learn from them?

4. The outcomes of the intercultural communication for ourselves: do I adapt how I interact and communicate? How flexible am I in responding to the needs of those I live or work with?

5. The outcomes of our intercultural communication for others: how appropriate is my behavior and communication style in the eyes of the other? Do I meet the goals of the communication in an appropriate and effective way?

As leaders and facilitators of intercultural learning in AFS we need not only ask others to understand the complexity of intercultural competence, to design workshops and courses to go beyond knowledge transmission and towards intercultural understanding and application, but we must also encourage each other to provide feedback and reflect on our intercultural journeys with others from diverse backgrounds.

To do this successfully, we must recognize the relevance of intercultural understanding. Deardorff warns that if we ourselves don’t see the relevance, we may lose our way. She reminds us that over the course of five decades research that provides definitions and rameworks can offer a starting place for an organization such as AFS to define what Intercultural Learning (ICL) means for us.

With Intercultural Learning and increased intercultural competence, leaders can grow beyond the operational and results-oriented approach to a process-oriented one that recognizes the importance of critical reflection and analysis in lifelong learning. Find the original article here.

Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters – An Online Tool

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How do you feel when you live or work together with someone who is very different from you – when this person has different ways of communicating, evaluating things, different ways of enjoying life, a different understanding of “how things are”, and different values guiding him or her through life? Are you curious, anxious, neutral – or does it even make you angry? What thoughts and feelings do you experience?

The set of materials called Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters provides useful tools for you to reflect on your encounters with individuals from different backgrounds. You can ask yourself: what could I have done differently in this situation? How were my actions influenced by an idea I had about the other? What puzzled me? How did I adjust? How did the other person adjust? What did I understand only after reflecting on the experience?

The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters is a reflective tool you can use by yourself or ask your trainees to use; facilitator’s notes; context, concepts and theories, concepts for discussion, and an Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters for younger learners with respective facilitator’s notes, text cards, and picture cards. Find an overview with links to all of these materials here.

When we learn about intercultural adjustment, communication styles, and the different historical developments that have shaped societies all over the world, we may better be able to connect our experiences to our new knowledge. Having cases and situations in mind that have puzzled us can help bring clarity to theories on intercultural communication – and to link them to our lives! This clarity can help us navigate through daily life in an intercultural environment and to develop strategies to improve our interactions and experiences.

To cooperate successfully in an increasingly globalized world is becoming increasingly important. As an AFSer, you can probably recall many encounters where things didn’t go as you planned. Your experiences may have taught you a lot about cultural differences and about how you react to, process, and learn from them. If you want to deepen your understanding, access the materials here and use them alone or to facilitate the intercultural learning of others. Reflecting on what made the communication difficult, what puzzled or confused you, and how you could overcome these difficulties makes for rich learning opportunities – and best of all: it’s free and available in French and Italian as well!

The CONTACT Program – Conflict Transformation Across Cultures

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Are you interested in a combination of Intercultural Learning, Peace Building, and Conflict Transformation? If you are, the CONTACT program, offered by the SIT (School for International Training) is worth knowing about! It is a program that offers learning opportunities that aim to make transformation of conflicts across cultures possible. The program has a special focus on the intercultural conflicts that we are confronted with and which often need special attention in an increasingly globalized world. In many cases, they are more difficult to transform than conflicts that occur with people from familiar contexts. In addition to this, many of them are even further compromised by stereotyping and other challenging intergroup dynamics.

The CONTACT Program deals with dynamics of intercultural conflicts, and with how these conflicts can be transformed. More specifically, the program introduces participants to the tools that can be used to achieve this. In the 3-week Summer Peacebuilding Program that takes place every year in Brattleboro, VT in the United States, practitioners from all over the world come together to learn more about intercultural conflicts and to share their experiences. The Contact program also offers a 2-semester-distance Graduate Certificate Program, which includes a field seminar. In addition to these two options, CONTACT now offers a Program in Kathmandu, Nepal, for South Asians who are interested in learning about the topic. Participants take part in a process which combines theory, self-reflection, community building, and collaborative problem solving which, within a multicultural learning environment, is extremely powerful.

The Contact program can support us in achieving the goals that we as AFSers have set ourselves: to provide intercultural learning opportunities to help people develop the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to create a more just and peaceful world. This may be a reason why more AFSers than ever are signing up for structured Intercultural Learning opportunities around the world. Find out more!

 

SALTO Youth – Online Resources for ICL Activities and Beyond

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SALTO Youth is a network of eight European resource centers that support youth and youth workers in their effort to unify Europe and to sustain peace in the European states. The SALTO Youth network is supported by the European Union, and a part of the European Youth Program.

This online resource is available to everyone! (not just Europeans) and offers many resources like the Toolbox for Youth Work. In the Toolbox, you can find a lot of methods and ideas for how to organize and conduct learning activities – as well as a more general insight into youth work and ICL (Intercultural Learning).

The Salto Youth Cultural Diversity Resource Center (one of the eight contributing resource centers) offers materials and training that may be especially interesting for all those who are excited about ICL. On its website, you can find documents on methods for Intercultural dialogue, such as a Leaflet on Intercultural Dialogue, or the Resource Pack for Intercultural Communication. You can use both to learn about culture and communication theories, and to get to know methods for intercultural training and other ICL activities.

If you register at MySALTO, you can have access to even more materials, like online applications, your own dashboard, and newsletters. Overall, this website can be very helpful if you want to conduct an ICL activity or simply learn more about intercultural topics.

Relevant to the AFS context, these training and informative resources can be used to help build the attitudes and knowledge needed to develop intercultural competence, openness and tolerance for a more just and peaceful world.