Tag Archives: Events

Summer Academy on Sustainability from an Intercultural Perspective

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Are you interested in learning more about the intercultural challenges that affect sustainability and connecting with like-minded people?

If you answered yes, then this training is for you: Summer Academy on Sustainability from an Intercultural Perspective in Istanbul, Turkey, from 22 July – 2 August, 2013.

Different ideas about energy politics and the sustainable use of resources can easily lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. But the fact that cultural reasons may be behind these conflicts is not often taken in consideration. This Summer Academy, cooperatively organized by InterCultur (subsidiary of AFS Germany), Karlshochschule International University, AFS Turkey and Istanbul Kültür University, approaches these topics from an intercultural perspective.

The two week Summer Academy offers courses aimed at developing solutions for intercultural challenges in international energy politics and environmental ethics, among other ecological issues. A particularly interesting aspect of the Academy is the innovative combination of university lectures and practical workshops, as well as the cultural diversity of the group (participants from 15 different countries are expected). Participants will have the opportunity to gain immediate intercultural experiences and to network with people from all over the world. This is one of the things that make this and other Summer Academies such a memorable experience!

The Summer Academy is held in English and is open to anyone aged 18–35 with a demonstrable interest in the fields of sustainability and intercultural encounters, especially undergraduate students and young professionals. Participants can earn academic credits according to the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). We pleased that we will be able to award several full and partial scholarships to qualified applicants for the Academy (scholarship application deadline is on May 12, 2013).

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Barbara.Langholf@intercultur.de.

AFS is dedicated to providing intercultural learning opportunities to a wide range of audiences. This Summer Academy is just one way that AFS is extending its offerings into the community and academy fields. Contact your local AFS organization today to see what is happening near you!

New feature on the ICL blog – ICL Conferences overview

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We are happy to announce the most recent addition to our blog – next to the ICL related books, movies and online resources; you can find a brand new ICL Conferences section. In this section, we will be sharing an overview of conferences and larger educational events that are related to Intercultural Learning or other relevant areas.

 

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.

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).

5 October: World Teachers’ Day

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October 5, World Teachers' Day

World Teachers’ Day is approaching! Every year since 1994, 5 October has been a day to celebrate teachers worldwide. The date was chosen by UNESCO to commemorate the adoption of the Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers on 5 October, 1966. This recommendation states the rights, responsibilities and international standards of teachers. Its adoption has helped to establish guidelines to promote the status of teachers and increase the quality of education worldwide.

One of the challenges for teachers in the decades to come will be how to welcome multicultural perspectives into their classrooms and how to bring together students, young and adult, with diverse backgrounds to work in common projects and build a shared multi-faceted culture. Incorporating Intercultural Learning skills and tools into education is needed more than ever.

If you are asking yourself: “What can I do on World Teachers’ Day?”, maybe you can start by creating awareness about the importance of teachers and education in your immediate environment and in our society. Take some time to discuss, share, listen and learn about what education means to you and to those around you. And maybe you can also send an e-card to your teacher (available in English, French and Spanish) to thank her or him for the change that her or his work has represented in your life!

Send your teacher a ‘Thank you’ e-card!

Global Youth Voice Conference

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International opportunities for interculturally-minded youth to get involved and collaborate with each other are becoming more and more accessible. A great example is “Global Youth Voice“, an international youth conference which brings together 200 young people from all over the globe with the common intention of finding out how young people can make the world better, together. An innovative approach to international organization, the project began in 2011 with a small group of 8 young people who dreamt of a place where all the intercultural-driven youth could collaborate and be in contact.

This year’s conference took place in Moscow, Russia on the 18th 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.

Intercultural Learning (ICL) in the Online World

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In a world as interconnected as the one we live in today, the importance of the online world for Intercultural Learning (ICL) cannot not be underlined enough. So many interactions occur online for students and professionals who are involved in education and we need to know how the connections in the online world affect those we work with and those we care about. By its own nature, the online world is a place for the interaction of cultures.

Global Education Conference 2012

The Global Education Conference 2012 will occur during International Education Week (November 12-16, 2012) and will take place entirely online. It is an event for students, educators and organizations that aims to build education-related connections, support cultural awareness and recognize diversity. While the conference does not focus on the use of information and communication technologies in education, it is interesting to see how it will take advantage of the new technologies to offer presentations and discussions on video conference calls and film screenings that promote global education. The mission of the conference revolves around the sharing of:

“ideas, examples, and projects related to connecting organizations, educators and classrooms, with a strong emphasis on promoting global awareness, fostering global competency, and inspiring action towards solving real–world problems“

The Global Education Conference 2012 is free and online. Session topics include using social networking to improve quality of education, how to teach with internet resources, and how to apply principles from the United Nations Earth Charter. Other topics related to ICL address university partnerships in crosscultural programming, leadership in organizations and more. The conference will also include keynote speakers and some film screenings online. If you would like to propose a topic for a session, you may do so until October 15.

At AFS we too are increasing our presence in the virtual world through the use of social networking media and by connecting those interested in ICL through our online Intercultural Link Newsletter, this blog, our Digital ICL Library, and some aspects of the Learning Program. As an international organization, much of our interaction occurs by way of conference calls, email, online publication sharing, etc. As we improve our own virtual intercultural communications, we can better foster global competencies that strengthen the intercultural experiences of young people studying abroad and of those who volunteer and dedicate their lives to AFS. For those of us connected to the online world, Intercultural Learning is key to accomplishing this, and the online Global Education Conference is a great place to start.

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.

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!

 

International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE) Conference in Veracruz, Mexico

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In February of 2012 the International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE) held a three day conference to address the global perspectives, or what the organization called the “northern” and “southern” experiences of intercultural education.

The organization describes itself as a global professional group of educators that focuses on issues of diversity in education. In the recent conference, the group paid special attention to identifying non-traditional ways to promote innovative and creative exchanges in local, national, and regional systems of education.

Xalapa, a small town in the Mexican state of Veracruz, was a vibrant, historic and academic location for the conference, where nearly 200 persons joined in discussions that were intimate in quality and diverse in topic. Sessions were presented by students and professors from local universities such as la Universidad Veracruzana, la Universidad Autónoma Indígena de México, la Universidad Intercultural de Chiapas, and la Universidad Autónoma Indígena e Intercultural as well as key organizations such as GTZ Programme to Promote Better Education in the region and Kibbutzim College abroad.

Keynote speakers presented their ideas from a comparative, cross-national, and sometimes even cross-continental perspective. Topics included culturally sensitive collaborative learning, the use of drama in intercultural education, and critical pedagogy. Concepts such as cultural diversity in the classroom, constructions of difference, the ideas of Paulo Freire, Augsto Boal and many others were also present. The panels and workshops were held in both English and Spanish, and much value was placed not only on the English-Spanish bilingual environment, but also on educational contexts that foster the preservation of indigenous languages in Mexico and nearby areas in the region.

IAIE hosted the conference with support from the Universidad Veracruzana, Coordinación General de Educación Intercultural y Bilingüe (CGEIB) and the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME).

AFS-Mexico, one of these important organizations, delivered a poster presentation at the conference and was joined by local staff, volunteers and student participants from Finland and Italy to speak about our educational programs, and the AFS experience.

Summer Academy of Intercultural Experience will have two editions in 2012

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In 2012, InterCultur, the consultancy branch of AFS Germany, is organizing two editions of the Summer Academy of Intercultural Experience in cooperation with Karlshochschule International University in Germany and with Karlshochschule International University, University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), as well as AFS Antarabudaya Malaysia in Malaysia.

The Summer Academies aim at developing applied solutions for intercultural challenges in business and society and is open to anyone aged 18-35 with a demonstrable interest in the field of intercultural communications and management. Primary target groups are undergraduate students and young professionals with a background or interest in intercultural experiences. Participants also need communicative English skills as all courses are taught in English.

Summer Academy in Karlsruhe

In 2010 and 2011, the Summer Academy on Intercultural Experience has already successfully taken place in Karlsruhe. This year’s Summer Academy takes place from July 29th to August 12th, 2012.

The Summer Academy will comprise lectures in three different areas: Intercultural Communication, Intercultural Management and Intercultural Competence. All courses are taught by university lecturers and professors. Qualified trainers with extensive experience in the international and intercultural field will support them during the practical sections of the workshops. This combination of academic resources and the knowhow of AFS represents an innovative, synergetic and applied concept.

Additionally to the academic course program, participants are offered extracurricular activities to fortify their experiences and to learn more about German and European culture. Besides complementary evening lectures by experts in research and economy, the extracurricular activities offer space to reflect on the learned theories and practices.

 

Summer Academy in Malaysia

The Asia-Europe X-Cultural Summer Academy on Intercultural Experience is a two weeks course on Intercultural Learning and will be the first intercultural learning academy in Malaysia. The Academy will take place in Bangi Selagor, Malaysia, from August 27 to September 7, 2012. 

The Asia-Europe X-Cultural Summer Academy will focus on intercultural topics with emphasis on Intercultural Communication and Culture and Society with the intention of fostering the intercultural understanding between European and Asian students.

The Academy will comprise lectures on acquisition of intercultural competence as well as on intercultural trainings. All the courses will have complementary workshop sessions with theoretical and practical content offered by lecturers and trainers which are experts with large experience in international environments. Lecturers and trainers will come from Europe and Asia to create a remarkable intercultural classroom learning experience.