Date: Sunday, June 26, 2016
Participants (from 4 countries):
USA: Rick, Jami | Iran: Rojhano, Elham, Behnam, Noorola | Italy: Ibrahim | Bangladesh: Zubayer
Format: General Discussion
Rick, as the host, opened this discussion with the following question.
“WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU HAVE LEARNT WHEN YOU TRAVELLED ABROAD?”
How did travelling affect you in a personal level?
Elham:
- Travel abroad gives people an opportunity to learn to be more flexible and more open to change people’s point of view about something.
- Give people a chance to see how other places are in the developing process.
- Beside those positive effects, travel abroad also has negative effects according to her opinion. The negative aspect is related to the huge progress of the country/places that she’s visited, for example when people visited a very modern country, one big question came up on her mind about how those countries have made huge progress and developed in a fast way and whereas it has not happened in her own country yet. Travelling gives potentially more open-minded approaches and more awareness about things that are different.
Ibrahim:
- In his opinion people will have different value of traveling or living abroad, it depends on the GOAL of the traveling itself.
- People who are traveling for business purpose will have different value with others who are traveling for education or sightseeing the nature.
- In His opinion just a glance seeing a place is not enough to get the whole picture about one place and to understand everything.
- People have to stay for some period of time living inside that country in order to get a deeper understanding about the place, the history and the people who live there. Once you live there, you understand why they do the things they do.
- For Ibrahim, travelling has affected him personally in terms of being getting away from the prison of ignorance and became more open to other people’s perspective. Not easily judge other people and culture; not become stubborn or a slave to your own ideas.
- Become more patient and respectful. Live united or die divided means respect others, patience, realize that you live among 7 billion people and you should be an open minded person to accept the difference.
- More understanding makes people live in harmony.
Behnam:
Behnam described his opinion based on his teaching experiences in some other places around the world. Before visiting the other country He has different views about the country, but when he came and visited the place there is nothing has changed in his point of views about the basic things of human life.
- The differentiation mostly about the place situation, new beauty of the people, and about different physical appearance and behavior of the people who live there, their habit and how they are taking care of their place, keeping it clean.
- Travelling abroad didn’t change his personality or his ideas because the behaviors of Europeans were the same he was used to in terms of being attentive towards others, caring, respectful, etc.
- From mathematic point of view, Behnam said that basically most people are the same, only the situations differ.
- Behnam has same opinion with the first participant, that going abroad, so many times gave an effect to compare what we saw in other place with what happened in our place. How people acted and reacted in some situation, how people obey the rules and discipline, and it’s unavoidable to compare to the situation in his country.
- The most interesting point is Behnam noticed that people in his country don’t care about simple rules as much as people in Europe did. And it’s a part of his concern.
At this point in the discussion Rick, as the host, gave an important underline about the topic:
- Going abroad giving people an opportunity to have strong appreciation for something. Much more open minded about everything.
- Accepting different cultures, different languages and not to easily judge people because there are differences.
- Acquired more appreciation towards our country of origin after seeing and experienced certain things abroad.
Ibrahim’s Feedback:
- Different country has different situation and different problems, and every country has different solution to solve the problem.
- Traveling abroad giving a good example that we can apply it in our country in a different way.
Jami:
- To get the value of being abroad depends on where you go.
- It’s a big difference if you are going to the big city and to the small city, so we have to learn a common way in the place that we visited. For instance, in big cities, people are used to living in a constant rush and it’s hard to keep up with the pace if we are not used to it whereas in small cities people use to do things in a slower fashion.
- As for the topic of the day, the way to make the world a better place for the next generation is to discern problems and try to explain to kids what is going on because it’s impossible to solve all problems right now but if we explain the situation and reasons for why we are in the situation which we are in, they may find new ideas and tools to solve it when they grow up.
- We must teach kids to be tolerant and promote community sense so that they won’t make the same mistakes we made so that the world can be in the way it is supposed to be. We should also be careful about overexposing them to bad things because that can be dangerous.
The discussion continued with the Host directing the conversation back to the original topic:
“HOW DO YOU SET UP FOR THE NEXT GENERATION FOR SUCCESS”
Rick gave 3 important things to the floor to discuss:
1. Clean and safe environment: We want them to live in a healthy, clean and safe environment which doesn’t have a lot of crime. Most people resort to crime due to some underlying root-issue and most of these things come down to values instilled in us when we are young, and the immediate environment around us.
2. Career: we want them to have a job or career. This gives them a focus for the future, a goal to achieve, and they will learn to be independent and self reliant.
3. Education: we want them to have education opportunities to able to achieve those careers and to meet the economic/career needs of the future.
Noorola:
- We have to have a good life and good understanding about our next generation in order to foresee certain things.
- In the past, life was much simpler than today and yet we see many jobless people in today’s world despite all the technology and advances.
- Noorola said a good environment is important to build good character for the next generation.
Zubayer:
- Clean environment is important; He was talking about technology to make a better environment for the next generation.
- Using technology to reduce the pollution and the bad effects of global warming.
- All we need is new inventions in technology to make the world a better place for our next generation.
- Develop some renewable energy such as solar, wind, thermal and others.
Behnam’s Last comment:
The basic needs that the next generation should have:
a. Clean Air.
b. Protect the air for our next generation; we have to care more about looking after our environment.
c. Stop pollution or at least limit the pollution emission.
d. Better Education.
e. Teach people how to value the environment, teach people how to be patient and tolerant. How to care about the principles and values. Appreciate what they have and taking care of what their ancestors did for them.
f. Educate people on how to add to what nature has provided for them. Contribute with something in their lives so that the next generation after them can build upon those things and in this way, we can create a chain of improvement from one generation to the next.
Rick was making a conclusion about what Behnam said that it’s all about the obligation and Responsibility and Behnam agreed to the conclusion.
- Obligation to taking care what nature gave to human beings and responsible to continue the cycle of life for our next generation, for a better future in a better world.
It was a meaningful discussion, thanks everyone for participating. Below are the links to listen to it.
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