In today’s show we will be going to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel twice, first with Mitch Weegman who was collaborating with leading edge researchers there for a two week research visit. We’ll be hearing about how just walking through Jerusalem takes you on an intercultural journey and then we’ll be hearing from Bjørn Zakarius Ekelund in Norway who was wondering if his team building tool, the Diversity Icebreaker, could help build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians. And finally thanks to Svetlana Kurilova who contacted us through our Facebook page to tell us about her travels through Europe with a Spanish friend. Continue reading “Jerusalem +++ Diversity Icebreaker +++ Svetlana Kurilova +++ Absolutely Intercultural 182 +++”
Author: admin
Admit See +++ China +++ France +++ study abroad +++ Absolutely Intercultural 180 +++
In this show we’re going to be featuring a new business dedicated to making it easier for all to apply to American universities.
The company is called AdmitSee and we’ll be talking to Stephanie Shyu one of the co-founders. One of the biggest sources of students to American universities is China, where the university entrance process is quite different. So what would you do if you needed help in applying to a foreign university? In China, they often turn to an agent who charges a great deal of money to help you out with language issues and especially in writing a personal statement, which most Chinese have no experience with. The idea that Stephanie Shyu and her co-founders had, was to create a site where students who had already secured a university place could share various aspects of their successful application for a much smaller fee than an agent would charge. Continue reading “Admit See +++ China +++ France +++ study abroad +++ Absolutely Intercultural 180 +++”
1 Laptop per Child +++ Uruguay +++ British Council +++ Philippines +++ IATEFL +++ Absolutely Intercultural 178
In this show we will ask is it possible to build a relationship with a teacher thousands of miles away?
I also have news of two free courses coming up later this year, which might interest internationally minded listeners based in Europe. The first one, called M-HOUSE, is for people who are home-based for whatever reason, be it unemployment, looking after children and so on and who might be interested in exploring whether starting a business would be a good idea. The second project called FLITE, is aimed at people either already working or who are well on their way to getting a degree in computer sciences and who are also interested in working on a business idea. These are two projects I’m working on where we will be needing pilot students who will be able to do the courses for free. Why is this international? Because you will be doing the course online and will be working with people from all over Europe.
Living Your Ideal Global Life Summit +++ Ziegler +++ Small Planet Studio +++ Authentizen +++ Absolutely Intercultural 176 +++
absolutely global
Do you remember we talked about the Living your Ideal Global Life online summit a couple of shows back?
Did you catch it all? If not then this show will give you a peek into what you missed and we also have news of next year’s summit, as well as a mini-event coming up very soon.
The idea behind the Living Your Ideal Global Life summit was to show how anyone can globalize their life, even by staying at home! But to be honest most of the contributions came from people who have done a fair bit of traveling. Anyway, I caught up with Sabrina Ziegler, one of the organizers of the summit and asked her how she thought it had gone.
Sabrina is based in Vancouver Canada and is keen to know what you want included in the next summit so do feel free to tell us on our Absolutely Intercultural Facebook page or as a comment on this blog.
And interspersed with Sabrina’s comments you will hear some short case studies of people who have taken the plunge in various ways. What about you? Are you planning to globalize your life? Find out more at Small Planet Studio or Authentizen.
Don’t forget we also have a Facebook Page where we share new links about 4 times a week. The most popular ones recently have been about culture shock in Russia, addressing foreigners in the workplace and a cheeky Valentine’s sign from the florists of Paris in France which I only uploaded as a whim but which turned out to be very popular. See those and more on our FaceBook page.
We have also added ‘The Suitcase Entrepreneur’ by Natalie Sisson, one of the case studies, to our Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store. Remember you don’t pay more by buying through our store but you do help us to meet some basic web hosting and maintenance costs.
The next show will be coming to you from Germany with Laurent Borgmann on April 4th so until Stay Tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
Global +++ Clandfield +++ Gokun Silver +++ 4Cs +++ SIETAR +++ Ideal Global Life +++ Authentizen +++ Absolutely Intercultural 174
Happy New Year! So a new year traditionally means New Year resolutions and what could those be? Could they include improving your English? If so, have you ever wondered how difficult it is for course book writers to choose topics which will appeal to students all over the world? We’ll be hearing from Lindsay Clandfield, lead author of the Global series of coursebooks about some of those issues. Maybe your New year’s resolution is learning about one intercultural diagnosis tool such as the 4 Cs of culture? If so then you will want to hear Margarita Gokun Silver explain what they are. Or maybe you want to make a huge change in your life but don’t know where to start. One step in that direction may be to attend the free Living Your Ideal Global Life summit starting on January 13th. We’ll be hearing from Sabrina Ziegler, one of the organisers about some more of the interesting angles about living abroad and what is possible in this connected world.
absolutely global
Have you ever wondered how your language course book gets written? In show 166 we heard about the topics that don’t make it into the course books, the so-called PARSNIP topics. But as I had Lindsay Clandfield, lead author of the new MacMillan Global series on the line, I took the opportunity to ask him how he decided what SHOULD go into his new coursebook. So let’s go absolutely global and start by asking why the world needed another coursebook for learning English!
absolutely how-to
Now I want to tell you about a new page on our website which is a 30 minute edited version of a workshop I did at the SIETAR Congress in Tallinn Estonia in September. The workshop was about podcasting for Intercultural trainers and we have released it as a special edition of the podcast on its own page. Thanks to Sigvor Bakke from Norway who did a magnificent job of recording on her mobile phone including a short snippet where we were looking at why you might want to podcast. The snippet included Matthew Hill from the UK. And if you want to hear the whole 30 minutes where I go into more detail about the whys and wherefores then catch it on its dedicated page.
absolutely coached
In a globalised world it becomes even more important to understand intercultural dynamics within yourself and others. Margarita Gokun Silver told us about how accompanying spouses can be helped in Show 170. You may remember that Margarita is a trained coach so let’s ask if she has additional tools to help people deal with intercultural situations? Honouring your values is a key takeaway. Margarita’s website is at www.globalcoachcenter.com where you can find loads more information about the 4 Cs and intercultural coaching generally. I have added the book mentioned by Margarita to the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store where you can find many other books relevant to intercultural communication. We receive a small amount of what you pay for every book which helps keep the site running. Browse our Amazon store here.
absolutely ideal
And finally, I return to the unique idea of the Living Your Ideal Global Life Summit which is free and online for 5 days starting January 13th. In Show 172 one of the organisers, Sabrina Ziegler of Authentizen , told us about a couple of the speakers so let’s go absolutely ideal as I asked Sabrina about Terry Rogocki’s contribution. Do you have any ideas about how to live your ideal global life? Don’t forget that the summit is free.
Don’t forget we also have a Facebook Page where we recently got our 300th like! Welcome Hamdi Erestreams in Tunisia! Hope you are enjoying the page and the links we add there regularly.
The next show will be coming to you from Australia with Laurent Borgmann on February 7th so until then Happy New year!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
Editor: Younes Jaber
SIETAR +++ Estonia +++ Ziegler +++ Ethical research +++ Ideal Global Life +++ Absolutely Intercultural 172
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In September I attended the SIETAR Congress in Tallinn Estonia where I met the two people who feature in this podcast. The music you hearat the beginning was being played by some street performers in Tallinn and Estonia is famous for the way in which it escaped the Soviet Union with its singing revolution. This involved thousands of people forming a line of over 600 kilometres while singing. So there was a lot of music in Tallinn and there is a bit more later.
SIETAR is the Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research and the Congress attracted many intercultural trainers and coaches who often work freelance. I was attending to talk about the results of the UniKey project which has just finished but I was also invited to do a workshop on how to podcast, as part of a pre-Congress set of workshops for freelancers. I promised those who attended that I would make a special edition of the podcast based on the How Tos we went through that day so watch out for that. It will be on a new page here when it’s ready.
absolutely global
Sabrina Ziegler of Authentizen helped us freelancers in how to organise our digital media presence and is generally an advocate of a global lifestyle. What does that mean? Well Sabrina will help us find out by putting on a free online summit called Living Your Ideal Global Life in January 2014.
absolutely ethical
One of the talks I attended at SIETAR was given by Iman Elshawaf talking about the unexpected difficulties she had when following the research protocols set down by her British university when she wanted to work with children in her school in Egypt. You have to get parental consent to work with the children and that means signing a form which can then be sent back to the university to document that everything was done ethically. So how easy was that?
Iman’s was just one of many fascinating sessions at the SIETAR Congress and we can’t possibly talk about them all. One thing I did enjoy very much was the graphics made by Raquel Benmergui of some of the sessions and I’ve used one of her visuals as the image for this show. Meanwhile on our Facebook Page we’re only a few short of 300 likes. Will you be number 300? In the last couple of weeks we’ve been featuring a great many links about stereotypes so if you want to know more about that topic then head on over to our Facebook page. And we’ll also be putting the podcast onto our YouTube channel.
We’ll be playing out with a short extract from the Estonian girls’ choir which entertained the Congress speakers in Tallinn Town Hall.
Our next show will be coming to you from Dr. Laurent Borgmann on December 6th so stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
Editor: Younes Jaber
Image: Raquel Benmergui, Sketchnotes at Flickr
absolutely intercultural 168 +++ I Go To China +++ English class +++ interns
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If you like the podcast then LIKE US ON FACEBOOK HERE! The FaceBook link which has generated the most interest recently was a graphic representing the intercultural skills most valued by employers which we found on the British Council’s blog. These turned out to be colleagues who understand, accept and adapt to cultural differences. So let’s see how much understanding, acceptance and adapting we hear about as we explore the social enterprise called I Go To China.
absolutely social
I first met Lu Yin from China in Denmark. Lu is now back in China running a group of companies which work to overcome the gap caused by poor English language teaching outside of China’s well known cities. He does this by arranging for Westerners to come and teach English to children at weekend schools as well as matching university interns with smaller Chinese companies which could use English speakers to reach a Western market. So let’s go absolutely social and hear first about the schools…and then more about Lu’s internship scheme.
We also hear from one of the teachers that Lu has recruited. I spoke to Alejandro Bueno about why he went to China to join Lu teaching English. The newest recruit is Ignasi, who, unlike Alejandro, had never been to China before his assignment with I Go To China. So there were pros and cons of going to China to teach English, to work as an intern or to do both!
So how much understanding, acceptance and adaptation did you hear? You’re welcome to leave us a comment here on our blog or on our facebook page or YouTube channel. And if you are interested in a Chinese adventure then contact me directly.
absolutely Amazon
If you buy through our Amazon store you don’t pay any more while we get a little bit of the price which helps to pay our podcast costs. You will find links to our Amazon store on our Facebook page also. If you know of an item which we should add then do let us know. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.
My co-host Laurent Borgmann is in Turkey at the moment with some of his students undertaking a citizen journalism project so expect to hear more about that soon perhaps on August 2nd when the next show will come out. So stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
absolutely intercultural 166 +++ slavery +++ NoProject +++ HotHouseProductions +++ Clandfield +++ Request Dance Crew
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If you like the podcast then LIKE US ON FACEBOOK HERE! Congratulations to DIANA STROHMAIER who was our 200th like on Facebook! We hope you like the links we post there periodically.
absolutely YouTube!
See this show on our new YouTube channel to see a wider selection of the art associated with our topic today.
absolutely no excuse
We are devoting the whole show to the topic of modern slavery and why we are all involved in sustaining this evil even though we may consider it to be going on very far away. There’s basically only one strand to today’s show and that is that there is absolutely no excuse. You will be hearing from Judy, who started the NoProject, Lindsay Clandfield about why it’s difficult to get the topic of slavery into course books, from Ismini Black about why she produces art about the slave trade and from Cody Brotter who wrote the two minute awareness raising video, ‘Now You Know‘ for a global audience.
absolutely hiphop
Request Dance Crew
absolutely Amazon
If you buy through our Amazon store you don’t pay any more while we get a little bit of the price which helps to pay our podcast costs. You will find links to our Amazon store on our Facebook page also. If you know of an item which we should add then do let us know. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.
The next show will be coming to you from Germany on June 7th with Laurent Borgmann so until then stay tuned!
Links
RSA Animate ‘The Empathic Civilisation’
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
absolutely intercultural 164 +++ UniKey +++ entrepreneurial skills +++ Sugata Mitra +++ internships +++ Fulda University
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If you like the podcast then LIKE US ON FACEBOOK HERE!
In this show we’ll be hearing about a new online training for foreign interns and if you decide this could be for you then you have the chance to take part free of charge starting in March! And not only that, if you take part in the course you could be in the running for a free trip to Brussels in September.
absolutely fake
My name’s Anne Fox and I wonder if you guessed correctly which of the stories we told you in the last show were true or not? Do you remember that we were asking students to imagine themselves in a future scenario where they take an internship abroad and some of them were true and some were not! This was a demonstration of the old adage ‘Fake it til you make it’ and we’re hoping that the effort that Younes & Philipp put into their stories will lead them to put at least some parts of their stories into practice anyway. You can read their comments about their plans on our Absolutely Intercultural Facebook page.
absolutely self-organised
And it was through Facebook that I discovered that Professor Sugata Mitra who was featured in Show 72, has been awarded the TED prize for 2013. TED is a growing bank of short talks by inspirational speakers which are freely available on the Internet. Every TED speaker is asked to describe their dream and this year it is Sugata Mitra who gets to put his into practice. Mitra’s research shows that we are are all capable of learning wherever we are and he wants to apply these findings to provide education in areas where it is poor or non-existent. And now with the prize money he has a million dollars to start realizing his dream.
absolutely entrepreneurial
So we’re in the middle of a financial crisis; there’s high graduate unemployment so maybe it’s a good idea for graduates of any discipline to find out more about how business works? They can do this through sponsored internships but today we’re going to hear about asking the interns to also follow a course during their internship to really get them noticing these entrepreneurial processes. And you could join them! The first pilot has just ended and we’ll be hearing from two interns who took the course and if you like what you hear and are planning to be an intern by April then why not apply to join the second pilot? The application form is at the Unikey website or you can contact me through our Facebook page or here on our blog.
The project is called UniKey where we invite foreign interns to go absolutely entrepreneurial. We hear first from a couple of the project partners and their vision of the UniKey project, Christina Langsdorf and Professor Dr Carsten Müller who teaches business subjects at Fulda University. The UniKey course is aimed at foreign interns, who are based in small and medium sized organisations and also social enterprises and the course is based on authentic entrepreneurial situations. We also hear from Nina Raiss, a German doing an internship in France, about why she agreed to do an additional Unikey online course on top of her internship.
We also meet Collette Wanjugu Döppner, the UniKey course director who you will meet online if you decide to do the course.
And as if it wasn’t enough to be doing a course on top of an internship, we added a slight gaming element in the form of extra challenges which were not compulsory. But if you did do them, there was a chance of winning a trip to Brussels. I was able to catch up with two of the winners and asked them about their motivation: first Nina Raiss, and then Torsten Scheithauer who is doing his internship in Northern Ireland.
There are lots of other added touches to the UniKey course and one of them is the opportunity to meet with a different entrepreneur or expert in each of the seven modules and ask them questions. For example in the third module which looks at ethical dilemmas we meet Ilona Jehn who worked at Lufthansa Cargo.
So if you want to join the next course starting at the end of March then apply now! And full disclosure: I am a partner in the project which is why I know so much about it!
absolutely Amazon
By the way I just added a resource to the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store, a sort of do it yourself multimedia course in intercultural competence called Komunipass. If you buy through our Amazon store you don’t pay any more while we get a little bit of the price which helps to pay our podcast costs. You will find links to our Amazon store on our Facebook page also. If you know of an item which we should add then do let us know. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.
The next show will be coming to you from Germany on April 5th with Laurent Borgmann so until then stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
Editing done with the help of Hindenburg Journalist Pro
absolutely intercultural 162 +++ South Africa +++ UniKey +++ Mhadi A Thavha +++ Hlokomela +++
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If you like the podcast then LIKE US ON FACEBOOK HERE!
The sound we started with was an instrument made by Thomas Kubayi who sculpts, drums and plays music and who gave my daughter a sculpting lesson when my family stayed in the Limpopo region of South Africa last year. It just so happens that I am working with a South African partner in a European project, the Uni-Key project, so I was very excited to meet Marié-Tinka Uys on her home turf when she showed me round some of the many projects which abound in her region of South Africa which is centred on Hoedspruit just outside the famous Kruger National Gamepark. The UniKey project is about supporting university interns who choose to do their internship in small enterprises rather than the large well-known companies. This means that the interns have a better chance of working with the founder of the company and get a better feel for the entrepreneurial skills needed to run a company. Europe is starting to send interns outside the EU, for example to South Africa, and there are plans for promoting exchanges in the other direction too with South Africans able to do internships in Europe. The UniKey project has developed an online course for the interns to follow and what we needed from our South African partners was some feel for how well our online course would travel outside of Europe. For example when we talk about marketing and partnerships in the UniKey course, is our definition wide enough to encompass the African way of doing things? What about our definition of business even? Marcelle Bosch, a Dutch woman and former aid worker, has her sustainable tourism lodge business, Madi A Thavha where we stayed a few days. Can you make a living employing the former farm workers that gained their livelihood from the land that you just bought? I also spoke to Costas who works for a clinic supported by the farms, which in South Africa, are huge concerns employing thousands of workers who often live on site. This is very different to farming in Europe which is highly mechanized with very few employees. And while we in Europe depend on a universal health service paid for through taxation, South Africa is facing the HIV and Aids epidemic which affects mainly adults in their prime, so health projects are often centred around the workplace as in the case of the Bavaria farm I visited near Hoedspruit where the clinic is financed partly by the employers and partly by community efforts. We’ll also be hearing a new perspective on how to improve the status of women and how European experts can’t always cope with the differences they meet in the African context. Welcome to Melina, Akos and Omar who are the latest people to like our Facebook page.
absolutely sustainable
So let’s start at Madi a Thavhi by seeing how we can be absolutely sustainable in the Limpopo region of South Africa on a former farm near Louis Trichardt or Makhado as the town is also known. And by the way, why towns have two names in South Africa is a whole other story which we could discuss on the Absolutely Intercultural Facebook page if you want to know more.
absolutely positive
So that was an example of how to look after your employees in a small scale business and now you can hear the sound of my daughter having a go at sculpting wood with renowned local artist, Thomas Kubayi. While I was in South Africa I had the chance to discover that there is a wide range of community organisations working hard with the big employers to provide all sorts of health, education and other benefits for their employees. So this means that instead of local government or public sector provision, there is a much more local and volunteer based-coverage in South Africa. In the Hoedspruit area the two businesses I heard most about were the game lodges and the farms. So my next visit was to a clinic based on a fruit farm which treats mainly HIV and AIDs patients through the Hlokomela project. In speaking with Costas I learned that when you are HIV positive, a key indicator you need to look at are your CD4 levels and I also learned that, at least on this farm, the disease can be managed so that there are reasons to be absolutely positive!
absolutely equal
As I was driven around the projects by Marié-Tinka Uys my eye was drawn to a set of murals painted on the wall of the Bavaria farm showing desirable male behavior such as not drinking and not using physical violence against your wife. When I asked Marié-Tinka about these she gave me a surprising solution about how to affect gender roles.
absolutely tasty
Marié-Tinka also talked about another part of the Hlokomela project which is an organic herb garden which has been started to supply the many game lodges in the Hoedspruit area. As we were talking she mentioned why interns should come alone and gave one example where the foreign expertise just could not cope with the differences experienced in South Africa.
Thanks to everyone who was willing to speak to me in South Africa and especially to Marié-Tinka Uys who introduced me to the wealth of activity going on in her area. She literally opened doors and gave me a peek into so much, which, as a tourist I would never have experienced. Thanks also to the UniKey project for giving me the opportunity to wonder about how people do business in other parts of the world. Who knows? This might even be the start of your own African internship adventure?
absolutely Amazon
And if you want even more background as to broader issues behind what people were telling me about in this podcast then you might consider visiting the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store here where we have both classics, basics and specifics for sale, a small proportion of which goes to us to support the costs of maintaining this podcast. You don’t pay any more to buy them through our store and every purchase contributes a little to the running costs of the podcast so if you’re thinking of buying, consider using our new store. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.
Our next show will be coming to you from Dr. Laurent Borgmann on February 1st so stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
Editing done with the help of Hindenburg Journalist Pro