You may not have noticed but May 21 was UNESCO’s World Day for Cultural Diversity, for Dialogue and Development. As a change to the cliched international fair of ethnic cuisine Debbie Swallow, crosscultural expert based in the UK, decided to start a blog called the World at Work. The idea would be to invite people [...]
May 172010
May 21st (Friday) is UNESCO’s “The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development” and Debbie Swallow has organised a new website for collecting workplace critical incidents. Do you have any examples of intercultural differences you have come across while working in other cultures? If so why not share them at the World at [...]
May 082010
I was amazed at the prevalence of tired old stereotypes about Africa when I spoke to Ekene Ajufo and Polly Anna Sanches Martinez about a discussion forum event they organised on behalf of the African Student Union at the University of Florida to discuss the theme of ‘Us v Them’. They called them National Geographic images. The problem [...]
Apr 112010
An aspect of intercultural learning which we haven’t looked at much so far in the Absolutely Intercultural podcast is experiences gained through voluntary work. In Barcelona at the Anna Lindh Foundation forum, I was fortunate enough to meet Rachad Izzat from Morocco who has gained a huge amount of intercultural experience through his involvement in [...]
Mar 052010
Pre-amble So I’m here at the Anna Lindh Foundation Forum and waiting for the workshop on creating spaces of peace and co-existence to begin. This is my first time live-blogging and I think this is going to be mentally exhausting. What often takes a great deal of time is adding links so that may come [...]
Tomorrow I set off for Barcelona and the Anna Lindh Foundation forum 2010 which is bringing together NGOs and voluntary organisations from around the Mediterranean in a bid to promote projects aimed at improving intercultural communication, dialogue and understanding. I have been invited as my capacity as blogger though to be honest it is more [...]
Feb 112010
I’m not sure why it hasn’t occurred to me before to explore the intercultural aspects of the EVonline sessions for language teachers offered by TESOL. For 8 years now I have been enjoying and benefitting from the international mix of teachers who sign up for these free development sessions and so in the last Absolutely [...]
Jan 222010
In most cases what you grow up with is normality and very soon you know how to behave in most regularly occurring circumstances. When you move to a different culture, all that know-how is not necessarily valid and suddenly the daily, weekly, monthly and annual rythms aren’t automatic anymore. Instead there are a whole array [...]
Jan 172010
I didn’t realise it explicitly at the time but my wedding was an intercultural affair since my mother is French and we invited several French relatives over to participate in the event. Thinking back so many years ago I don’t recall ever paying any attention to what the French participants would be expecting, still less [...]
Jan 042010
Yes, it’s that time of year again! Today marks the first official day of registration for the free EVonline sessions offered as part of the run-up to the TESOL conference in a couple of months time. The sessions have been going for many years now and still there is much of interest for all types [...]