Recap: Community-Building Intercultural Exchange Program 2023
This summer, our Intercultural Exchange Program has grown up becoming a real Community-Building virtual camp!
Together, with more than 200 hundred high schoolers from across 24 countries, we have created boundaries, discussed global issues, learned languages and discovered the real meaning of global citizenship.
With our weekly Culture Coffee Chats, students were randomly matched to have a one-on-one conversation about their cultural perspectives, history, traditions and values, supporting each other and going through the 5 week long intercultural experience.
Each week participants challenged themselves with a different global issue:
Week 1: Culture
Week 2: Education
Week 3: Gender Equality
Week 4: Youth Political Engagement
Week 5: Environment
Additionally, weekly on Tuesday our team held Civic Workshops explaining how to identify a community problem & ideate an actionable solution; what is an action plan, project management & evaluation; how to build a team, a network; how to deal with digital presence, fundraising & project longevity. These topics were indispensable for participants, who were encouraged to make a creative project and a community service project as culminating the program. The most significant community-service project proposals received a grant prize of $150 to inspire young people to step out and take action.
Just like last summer, language classes were a requirement for the global citizen’s passport and in order to become a real community The World In Us has provided as many as 8 professional language teachers. Participants were able to take up to 2 language classes weekly, for both, beginner and intermediate level. Languages offered this year were: Arabic, French, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Spanish and Urdu.
Participants weren’t the only ones who attended the program. The World In Us hosted Professional Development sessions too! We’ve learned from Caroline Gao (an incoming Harvard student) the U.S College Admission & Application Process; with Money Matter we have attended a class of financial Literacy; thanks to Katrina Springer, a U.S Foreign Service Officer, we learned about the Career and Life of a U.S Diplomat which had been further explained by a representative of the National Museum of American Diplomacy.
The program ended with an invitation … The first Intercultural Exchange Program ending ceremony: the potluck! During this last moment we were able to exchange recipes, traditional holidays and cultural activities!
