Tag Archives: ICL Project

Global Youth Voice Conference

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Connecting Young People Worldwide | The GNG Youtube Channel

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Unique, Essential, Practical…

Posted on by
Reply

My name is Paul and I am an intern at AFS Intercultural Programs. When I started my internship at AFS, I knew little more about Intercultural Learning other than an initial interest.

Since I have a B.A. in International Studies, my experiences share some similarities to AFS and Intercultural Learning, but my understanding of the subject was at the most basic level.  I came from studying the realms of politics, history, security, conflict resolution and a bit of economics thrown in for good measure.  Of course I was aware of the fields of Intercultural Studies, but this time last year, I considered the concept of intercultural learning to be little more than an interesting, but mainly theoretical, lens through which to view those from different cultures.

All this changed once I saw first-hand the vast array of work that AFS Intercultural Programs accomplishes.  Continue reading →

Stereotypes in Us: Learning for Tolerance

Posted on by
Reply

AFS Czech Republic has decided to broaden its horizons by developing a new ICL project for a special group of young people: students of vocational high schools. The project, called Stereotypes in us – Intercultural and Experiential Learning for Tolerance, was developed by AFS with two other Czech non-governmental organizations: Multicultural Center Prague (- http://www.mkc.cz/en) and INEX – Association for Voluntary Activities (http://inexsda.cz/en).

AFS wanted to engage a different group of young people other than the participants and volunteers than typically attend secondary school. We were aware that Czech vocational high schools do not offer a great deal of ICL and their students tend to develop stereotypes and prejudice around other cultures. The main aim of the project is to prevent xenophobia and racism among students through ICL, using various interactive methods. We offer different activities for students as well as for their teachers.

The main offerings include a 90 minute Intercultural Workshop and three 90 minute Intercultural Workshop Classes where the students talk about differences among cultures, think about their own personal values, or discuss the role of media in our lives. The project also offers out-of-school activities: a 3-day Mini-Workcamp and an Experience Course. The Mini-Workcamp is voluntary work on a local project for 10 hours together with different intercultural activities, whereas the Experience course focuses on teambuilding games to make the participants think about themselves and their role in a multicultural group. All these activities are led by experienced trainers, including AFS volunteers, and accompanied by foreigners living in the Czech Republic, which brings the students face to face with different cultures.  We occasionally invite our hosted AFS students too so that they can experience and learn something new as well.  Finally, we also offer a Teacher’s Workshop which is a one-day event with time built in for sharing best practices and presenting ICL topics within this project.

The project, begun in June 2010, will continue until May 2013. It is funded through the Education for Competitiveness Operational Programme of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The programme mediates funding from the European Social Fund, one of the structural funds of the European Union, in the programming period 2007-2013. The total funding was over half a million euros, covering all project-related expenses.

Stereotypes in Us looks to the long-term and has multiple connected pieces.  We are happy to share the AFS vision in additional places and offer new perspectives to young people. Learn more at: http://stereotypek.mkc.cz/

Karolína Kouslová, Educational Program Coordinator, AFS Czech Republic