Friday 06th December 2019 | Workshop with Daniela Molzbichler (Fachhochschule Salzburg) and Sumeeta Hasenbichler (Frau und Arbeit) held at AAI Salzburg
In my personal point of view the workshop “Inter- & Transcultural Communication“ was a great experience to understand the concepts and struggles behind transcultural differences and inherent problems of multicultural relation, we were able to realize that the culture from every person defines in a great proportion what the person conceives as a truth, value etc. We have learned that cultural heritage is part of our lives and it’s normally related to the places where we were raised. But that at the end, it is our own responsibility to take or refuse the different cultural levels (values, rituals, heroes and symbols) of our own culture.
The workshop was really interactive, which facilitated us the understanding of different cultural levels. It was really interesting to hear from every workshop participants cultural background values. At the end of the discussion we were able to realize that even if we come from really different places, and therefore, from different cultural backgrounds, the essence of a big part of cultural value levels are similar or not so different from our own culture value levels. The ability to project our cultures into the culture of the others is an important step for intercultural communication, the ability to empathize with beliefs and cultural backgrounds of the others it´s a good first step in the right direction for achieving an effective and efficient transcultural communication.
Some other important concepts were discussed and again the interactive foundation of the workshop allows us to understand terms like stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination and misunderstandings; we were able to discuss several examples of these concepts and understand some key components and aspects of intercultural competences that will facilitate a transcultural communication and improve our overall communication skills in regards to multicultural environments.
In the end, I believe that the people that have the opportunity to live and experience another cultures increases its own cultural horizon, which might lead to a more reflexive self-construction of different cultural value levels; these people become the so-called “multicultural hybrids”, which is a great term of reference for the AAI scholarship holders. Most of us have left our countries, friends and family to achieve a specific level of postgraduate education in Austria which has become a new cultural border for us to understand, experience, learn and most important adapt to and construct our own self-reflexive cultural values.
Thanks to the invited lecturers and to the Afro-Asiatisches Institut Salzburg for this great learning opportunity.
B. Eng. Alejandro Montelongo
