"Wisdom is knowing how to stay with the difference without wanting to eliminate the difference"
This sentence by Gregory Bateson summarizes in a few words what is one of the fundamental teachings of the study abroad experience proposed by AEF.
Approaching diversity is something we experience every day: each of us thinks and acts on the basis of their beliefs, life experiences, but above all of the history of their country and their culture. Choosing to start a course of study abroad means crossing borders and discovering wonderful places, learning another language but, most of all, clashing with variety and heterogeneity. This can only be a great opportunity for personal growth. Opening up to new ways of doing and thinking is a first step to eliminate stereotypes and prejudices that are the basis of discrimination and intolerance between human beings.
Traveling and mixing with a new culture is a unique experience, which can completely upset your life as well as allowing you to get rid of all the preconceptions and dogmas that are instilled in us since childhood; you become citizens of the world. Cultural differences are the reason for approaching the Other, the unknown, the different, to create a new, less rooted identity for ourselves as well. An adventure, like the one you can experience with AEF, opens your mind, allows you to know and overcome your limits, get involved, overcome differences and transmit values such as those of inclusiveness and integration.
Because, after all, there is an essential element that unites us all: we are all human beings, and we can recognize humanity in the eyes of a person you meet on the street, even if they do not have the same language, even if they are not faithful to the same religion, while not walking the same streets, while not eating in the same way.
You go home richer, with a baggage full of memories and awareness, with many new friends from all over the world, part of a huge international family, heterogeneous, but united in differences.
