Open Your Borders It's Time for Dialogue

"Open the Borders, it's Time for Dialogue" - this beautiful quote were singing participants of the project I have done in Wroclaw (Poland) in April 2008. I like this quote even more now, it gain for me new meaning, deeper one, more personal.

The first idea behind this quote was to speak up about problems we faced while preparing for exchange. We wanted to make euro-med youth exchange about intercultural dialogue; we have invited people from 6 countries (3 EU and 3 meda) and we were so close not to have our time for dialogue, because people from meda countries couldn't get visa. We were fighting for 2 months with administration, finally the group from Egypt didn't come and group from Jordan got visa in the last moment, one guy went to the embassy in the day when he flew to Poland.

But there is something more then just the borders we cannot cross because of visa. To have intercultural dialogue we need to cross our personal, mental borders. What's that?

1. Lack of knowledge about "others"
2. Personal stereotypes
3. Prejustices
4. Being ashamed of asking
5. Lack of patient and forbearance
6. Being self-oriented

I realized plenty of times that intercultural dialogue is not easy. When you are meeting someone cultural different from you, first days are amazing, you are learning each other, having fun. But later on you are starting freaking out, you don't know why. There might appear some situation, that you don't know why but you are getting into some conflicts with people. There are a lot of misunderstandings between people, which build conflicts. Most of us, instead of try to solve problems, they are building theories. Misunderstanding some behaviours of "others", some expressions and basing on this they are building the negative impression about this person.

Solution? Don't try to guess what other person think. Don't over-react! Respect what people are saying! OK, it was quite general and ideal, but from my personal experience if you are talking about something and it looks that conflict may appear or you feel that the second person doesn't understands you - DEFINE WORDS YOU ARE USING! and in what context they were used.

Be aware that if you say to someone "you are stupid" as a joke, for some it can be funny, but some can be really thought. And there is many other examples...

Open Your Borders, It's Time for Dialogue